It has been twenty-nine years after the foundation of Dell Inc. Started by young Michael Dell in his dorm room with just $1000 today Dell is multi-billion dollar company selling computer hardware and services. It has been a one big journey for Dell and his company. The recent success of smartphone and tablet has made dell to rethink its future strategy. Dell almost has no presence in Smartphone and Tablet category and it has met with little success with Streak phone. Currently market is ruled by Apple and Samsung in both the segment. On 5th Feb, 2013 Dell Inc decided to go private in a leveraged buyout by founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners with Microsoft contributing some substantial funding. Let go through the events that changed the computer industry in early 80’s.
1984 - Michael Dell, a 19-year-old starts PC’s Limited form his dorm room. Selling assembled computer way below the market price.
1985 – PC’s Limited created their first in-house PC with 10 MB of storage capacity with a ‘humble’ price tag of $795.
1988 – PC’s Limited changes its name to Dell Computer Corp and issues IPO raising $30 million in the process. Dell market capitalize rose to $85 million making it one of the fastest growing tech company in 80’s.
1989 – Dell first laptop named 316LT goes on sale
1991 – Dell converts its entire product line to high-performing Intel 486 microprocessors
1992 – Achieves $2 billion in annual sales, a growth of 125%
1993 - "Liquidity, profitability, and growth" become a company mantra
1995 – Dell goes global expanding to Asia, Japan, Europe and the Americas.
1996 – Launching of dell.com with sales of $1 million in daily sales in six months
1997 - Ships 10-millionth PC
2000 - Dell.com's online sales hit $40 million a day
2001 - Takes the worldwide No 1 spot as a computer system provider
2002 – HP buys Compaq and becomes the No 1 in PC sales
2003 – Dell rebrands as Dell Inc.
2004 - Michael Dell resigns as CEO. Kevin Rollins becomes new CEO.
2005 – Growth begins to decline.
2007 - Rollins resigns and Michael Dell returns as CEO
2009 - Dell acquires Perot Systems for $3.9 billion
2010 – Launches streak a 5-inch tablet, but fail to cheers the market. Buys Boomi, Exanet, InSite One, KACE, Ocarina Networks, Scalent and Compellent. These companies have their interest in storage, systems management, cloud computing and software.
2011 – Dell acquires Secure Works, RNA Networks and Force10 Networks
2012 – Further acquires Credant Technologies and Quest Software
2013- Dell goes Private in a leveraged buyout by the founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners with the additional funding from Microsoft.
