Dell Computer Corp, the world's largest maker of personal computers, had "record" revenue last year, Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell said.
While some technology companies saw revenue last year fall by as much as 70 percent, "We have already achieved our peak revenues and we are growing quite nicely," Dell said in an interview yesterday at the World Economic Forum.
"I think we were perhaps the only technology company to have record revenues," he said. In the fourth quarter "we grew at a 23 percent premium to our market, so Dell had 24 percent unit growth, our industry had positive 1 percent."
The CEO did not give a forecast for earnings in its most recent quarter, which ends Jan. 31. In November the company said fourth-quarter profit will be US$0.23 a share on sales of US$9.7 billion.
"Our operating income margin steadily increased just a little bit throughout this past year," Dell said. "Expenses have been kept at a pretty steady level, actually trending a bit down."
The Round Rock, Texas-based company will continue to drive costs down "as a way of stimulating our growth," Dell said. "Employment has been growing a little bit, but not as fast as revenues, which means productivity."
Michael Dell said the company doesn't contemplate reducing its workforce in the coming year, although "you could have a situation where you have a growth in one area and maybe not so much growth in another, in terms of types of employees."
Over the past year Dell has entered the hand-held computer market and plans to begin selling printers under its own name this year. Neither will contribute much to net income immediately, Dell said.
"Our main growth is coming from servers and storage, services, and geographic expansion," he said.
Hand-held devices are "a very small market to begin with and they don't sell for much," he said. "The relationship between the number of press articles and the revenue is completely out of whack."
Still, `it's a fast growing market and we're a new entrant, so it can grow pretty quickly."
Lexmark International Inc, the No. 2 maker of printers for PCs, will make Dell products starting in the first half of the year.
"I don't know" how many printers the company will sell, Dell said. "Hopefully, a lot. We haven't given a projection, but we think we're going to be able to deliver a lot of value to customers there, just as we have with servers."
Servers are computers that perform tasks such as running company networks and hosting Web sites.
The CEO said that while he expects the US economy to strengthen as the year progresses, "we're planning to grow irrespective of what happens in the macroeconomic environment. In the last 9 quarters we've grown our units at a 20 percent or better premium to the market and our intention is to continue to grow faster than the market."
The 32-year-old Dell, who founded his namesake company in 1984, said earnings will continue to grow.
"Our business is doing well. I don't see a huge change from what's been happening over the past few quarters," he said.
"We've been growing, we have record revenues, we've been profitable, and we're gaining market share, we're delivering great value to customers, so I don't have much to complain about."
Shares of Austin, Texas-based Dell fell US$0.83 to US$24.38 on Friday. The shares have declined 9.6 percent this year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained