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Can Dell and HP Keep Pace With An Asia-Centric PC World?
MojoKid writes "If you've paid any attention to the PC industry in the past few years, you're aware that things aren't as rosy as they used to be. After decades of annual growth, major manufacturers like HP and Dell have both either floated the idea of exiting the consumer space (HP) or gone private (Dell). Contrast that with steady growth at companies like Asus and Lenovo, and some analysts think the entire PC industry could move to Asia in the next few years. The ironic part of the observation is that in many ways, this has already happened. Asia-Pacific manufacturers are more focused on the consumer electronics market and better able to cope with low margins thanks to rapid adoption and huge potential customer bases. Apple has proven that high margin hardware can be extremely profitable, but none of the PC OEMs have been willing to risk the R&D costs or carry new products for a significant period of time while they adapt designs and improve market share."
windows blows and linux ain't what it used to be
Start building them here in the USA.
If labor costs are too high, use robots.
Futurist Traditionalism
Ubuntu £inux has fundamentally changed the game, forever. Soon the entire PC industry will be chucking out crappy low end PCs running Unity and unable to play any of the games I bought. I just got Aliens: Colonial Marines and it won't even play on Ubuntu, how can anyone use such a terrible product? Ubuntu was running on netbooks from dell but even the crappy dell company stopped selling those because Linux sucks so much for gaming.
Just offer options that customers want! For instance don't only offer Windows's based notebooks, offer Linux as an option, imporve tech support so people can actually get help. Offer GREAT hardware, not just the cheap crap.
when they're referring to Dell & HP as "major PC manufacturers", is this for the home-PC or the business-PC market ? I always thought that when John Doe visits a PC store to buy a PC, he'll probably buy a custom PC that this store assembles & sells rather than a Dell or an HP. OTOH a company will strike a deal with Dell or HP because they'll probably offer extra support etc. That's the common "practice" in the european market at least. Is this true for the US market too? Is Dell's or HP's market share in the home PC larger than that of the custom built PCs ?
"You can't get good chili in Taiwan."
The summary seems oblivious to the ODM/OEM relationships that have existed for decades. Dell and HP don't *make* anything, they just rebrand things made by Arima, Compal, Uniwill, Quanta, Clevo, etc. Taiwan designs and manufactures everything, Dell and HP simply slap some stickers on them and retail them with the addition of whatever service/support package.
The whole market has belonged to Asia for a generation, and it's not going to change.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Never again. Really, it reminds me of setting up Suse circa 2003, so many problems! Who would have thought that a 3TB drive won't work in a machine because it needs some EFI bios? Or that the drivers won't install because the installer can't access the protected portion of the disk. Or that the BIOS upgrade won't work because it's for Windows 8 only. Or that the display is too small, and only digging into CCC do you find it's set that way by default by Radeon. That Windows 7 can't be bought now, you have to run around to find a shop with a copy left over. And so many versions of OS software, which one do I buy? Starters, Basic, Professional, Unprofessional, Ultimatomatoe? How about none of them!
I think the Asian makers are succeeding with Android, and I think the US makers are flopping with Windows and this is just the shift from Windows to Android shown geographically. It's just a mess in the PC world and that's largely at the door of Ballmer's decade at Microsoft. All manner of craptastic PC hardware, stuffed into boxes from the 1990's, priced way beyond their value.
Wife's not getting a PC, I bought her a tablet, my PC experience was/is just too horrendous and the tablet has 4 cores, a higher res screen, and lots of nice stuff like GPS and touch. I think many people are making the same choice, ditching Windows.
The components have been made in the East for a long time now, particularly Taiwan was famous long before China. For those that missed the memo, the recent HDD crisis was due to floodings in Thailand which is in SE Asia. All sorts of optics and related electronics is heavily centered around Japanese companies like Canon, Nikon and Sony. The OEMs have mostly just been assembling systems from standard parts which is a commodity service.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's believed to be one of the drivers for them going private... so they don't have to answer to Wall Street when they unload businesses they don't want to be in, like HP had to when Apotheker made the announcement.
The irony here is the outsourced labor formed their own companies and are now directly competing with their "partners", and beating them.
The natural state of Capitalism is tyranny; capitalism forces companies to reduce the cost of services and products, and all products and services are a function of labor. The easiest way to reduce cost has, and always will be, slavery; there are many synonyms we call it to make it sound polite. It's only when managers can come to some degree of agreement about what the cost of labor actually should be that actual innovation and progress occurs, as measured in less man-hours spent creating X products. China does not recognize the pricelessness of life, and without that recognition to guide its decisions, ruin is inevitable; You can improve economic efficiency but without a place for that efficiency to go, you end up in a viciously deteriorating economic cycle of debt, corrupted price signalling, and malinvestment that kills you when resource scarcity catches up.
In the last 15 to 20 years we've seen a dramatic shift in the way that innovation occurs away from think-tank research centers and towards placing staff in universities and on the factory floor producing incremental upgrades instead of groundbreaking advancements. Companies used to recognize incremental upgrades was a war of attrition and masturbation, now it's "how fast can we half cost and double performance?"; the problems from this way of thinking is piling up as STEM workers put forth the least innovative horseshit.
Up until 2011 Microsoft's strategy was to drive up PC marketshare but controlling the low end. Microsoft was very worried about initiatives like Sun/Oracle's Java Desktop to use thiner client distributed software and lower end machines. Their strategy was to push the price of PCs down low enough so that there weren't meaningful cost saving is just using server based architectures and local program execution was the norm. This is the same reason they focused so heavily on getting control of web technologies and tying them to Internet Explorer / Windows.
With the success of open Web Standards the move towards server based services is happening. This has required a strategy change. Windows 8 systems to work well require more expensive hardware. Microsoft is reintroducing margin back into the business and driving the cost of hardware up. They are willing now to sacrifice the low end so that the total experience on rich clients is much much better than on thinner architectures. Dell and HP sell mainly to corporations. Corporations are still years away from migrating to real Windows 8 hardware as a norm. I think this is short sighted on Dell/HP's part because in 5 years there is likely to be margin in the business. They've now gone through most of the lean years and just as the market is going to go back to being high profit they are exiting.
Once other companies get the experience in making powerful multi paradigm machines it will be hard for these companies to reenter the market. That being said I think Dell isn't existing the PC market, rather I think they going private so they can undergo a restructuring without having to provide regular public scrutiny.
How is this even a question? We're draining what little wealth we have into fattening up the poor with HoHos and 40s just to pay for their heart attacks so they can linger around Section 8 housing for generations. Our leadership is obsessed with banning firearms that kill less people a year than allergic peanut reactions. We talk about cutting pure R&D and education in place for maintaining troops to keep up the German occupation as it rolls up on 70 years since the end of the last war there. We pay upwards of 40k a year to keep pot smokers in jail while street crime is fueled by a blackmarket. All the while we send money to the same people who want to kill us.
Our leadership is useless, the man on the street is happily clueless waving his party's flag and those who actually still bother to care have no power. We're fucked.
I've built around 150 PCs at my shop thus far and had 1 part failure ever in around 5 years. My computers are absolutely perfect and a 120GB SSD + Pentium G860 + 4GB of RAM system runs around $475, data transfer included. Good luck competing with that. I think people like me are in every town and we're putting HP and Dell out of business. Oh, and if you didn't hear, Best Buy is closing all retail locations over the next 5 years. Yay, we crushed them. Inferior products and services fail in free markets.
In very large public corporations the CEO is concerned with "managing numbers & people".
To lead in a technology arena, you need to really focus on long term strategic leading edge R&D.
I don't see evidence of that at HP & Dell. It is too easy for their CEO to say "We are acquiring our technology by buying companies." Has that worked out well?
Asia-Pacific manufacturers are more focused on the consumer electronics market and better able to cope with low margins thanks to rapid adoption and huge potential customer bases.
How about:
(1) Less greed,
(2) Being nimble
(3) Proper labor relations and management?
(4) The sense that, "We can beat them at their game?"
(5) Proud citizenry - Those Asians usually patronize Asian
made goods. You ask a Japanese what the best car is.
They'll tell you it's a Toyota! They then buy that!
Find a new market. I for one would llike to have a truly open box (with coreboot and other free/open shit). And make it hacker-friendly. Hard to brick etc. And cheap. And kittens (or a piece of RMS's beard).
I'll give you 2 (nimble), and 4+5 (local pride), but how does (e.g.) Foxconn exemplify less greed and proper labor relations and management? I guess for certain values of "proper labor relations" you could be right, but probably not what most people think of!
See above.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-03-31/
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
I bought a new laptop 2 months ago, I searched for ages looking for something adequate. I settled on a Lenovo x230 for the ability to have 16GB RAM, mSATA SSD + HDD within a 12.5 inch frame 2kg. Spent USD$1000. I had reservations about Lenovo (Chinese company) but didn't really see many alternatives.
I don't think any other company sells anything anywhere near these features.
Anybody? LOL.
Of course, it's nothing to do with Africans' average IQ being around 70, is it. That would be 'racist', right?
proper labor relations?
you mean that workers are crammed into sweat shops, making $1/hr or less, no benefits or health insurance/care, sleep on cots and don't see their families for a month at a time... Here is where the real difference is...
Your rant was pretty comical. Evidently you can't see what is probably obvious to everyone else just by reading your own description, namely that you have been so strongly programmed by your favorite operating system that you can't cope with any different one.
Just a moment's thought should have been enough to convince you that it's not the Linux distros that are broken, but you. The reasoning is extremely simple, but probably beyond you. It's that each Linux distro has umpteen thousands of fans who totally love it and for whom it works just fine. The fact that you've tried a dozen and judged them all to be unusable is therefore a dead giveaway that the problem lies within you, and nowhere else.
When Americans patronize American-made products it is a sign of bigotry.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
...and Linux can't get real work done, ever. Sorry, almost no pro apps of any value run on Linux.
LOL ironically this year Android will have sold become most used OS in the world. Perhaps those "pro apps" you were talking about aren't that pro.
Extra! Extra! Fundamental law of the universe predicts demise of American tech giants! Dell and Hewlett Packard preemptively declare bankruptcy! Assets liquidated and majority stakes acquired by Asia-Pacific manufacturing firms.
There is no profit in PCs anyway.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Every HP desktop I've bought in the last 10 years contained an ASUS motherboard.
There is no profit in PCs anyway.
Just most of it goes to Microsoft :).
(3) Proper labor relations and management?
By this I suppose you mean "Unions are prohibited". That sounds like a mercantilist's dream come true. And less greed? Are you kidding me? Is this an excellently crafted troll? Poe strikes again...
Hey man, they're just doing jobs Americans don't want. I mean when Mexicans started washing dishes 16 hours a day for $50 everyone said that no American would work for that so the Mexican was just doing a job Americans don't want. Well, Americans don't want to work for 16 hours days in a sweatshop for 50 bucks a day...
First you don't run professional applications on Android, only consumer stuff. Second, Android is not really Linux and Android applications do not run on pure Linux.
There is no first, there was, an Abusive monopoly...and now its still just a less valuable one, as applications go cross platform. Your arguments are kind of out of date. Applications aren't Microsoft exclusives...and those that are have less value. Microsofts OS is some kind of tablet/destop hybrid nightmare I want nothing to do with...and don't have to, Alternatives are here and more popular, and however you try to spin in the Linux in Android is the same Linux[ish] as the Linux in...Ubuntu.
Not really. The case/layout is some of the least of the technical parts of a computer. All the components inside are the higher tech bits and you find they come from all over. The big daddy, the CPU, is usually from the US. Most of Intel's fabs are in the US, and their design centres are in the US and Israel. Same deal with the motherboard chipset, though their Ireland fab does quite a few of those. Assembly largely depends on where you are, they have packaging facilities in the US, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Malaysia, and China.
The graphics card, if there's a separate one, was fabbed in Taiwan by TSMC, at least for now (both AMD and nVidia re displeased with them) but designed in either the US or Canada since that's where nVidia and AMD respectively have their design centers. All development is done there.
For memory it really runs the gamut. Depending on the company the chips can get fabbed in the US, EU, or Asia and final assembly of the sticks is often done elsewhere. Some places, like Micron, like their own modules, others buy from other companies (Kingston favours Hyynix these days).
Storage it varies. HDDs are all Asia all the time. Final assembly is pretty much Malaysia or China. Components come from various places, motors notably from just one firm in Thailand. For SSDs it again depends on the company. Samsung is all internal and does their own flash, CPU (though it is based on an ARM core) and construction. They do final assembly in Korea, the flash itself is sometimes fabbed in Korea though a lot of it is fabbed in Texas (Samsung has a big plant there). Intel buys their controllers from Sandforce, a US company, but they are fabless so Intel fabs the ones they use. Their flash they make themselves mostly in their Utah but also Singapore (the facilities are co-owned Intel and Micron).
For discrete components, like caps and so on, then Japan is usually the big supplier. It varies some, China is used as well, but Japan is still real, real big in the discrete components game.
Power supplies? That's all China all the time. There are only a couple companies that make them, and they do the design work too. They put out a PSU design, companies then alter the specs to their liking (upgrading components for better reliability or whatnot) and then they are built to order.
LCDs are mostly Korea in terms of panels, though China is in that market too, and nearly all China for final assembly.
Computers are really quite an international production. They use parts form all over, and designs from all over. Remember that the place that produces a part isn't necessarily the place that designed it. This is not only true for fabless companies like nVidia, but even for companies like Intel. They don't do design, fab, packaging, and all that in one facility, they are all over the place.
To say the market belongs to Asia is rather silly. It belongs to the world.
Oh and with regards to Dell? Have a look at the systems you get in the US. Mexico and Brazil are the usual sources for final assembly, not Asia.
Windows support is my profession and working at a university I get to deal with old systems, and old OSes. It isn't a big deal. I've installed XP, a 12 year old OS, loaded drivers, and patched it to current all from the GUI, and without any real amount of trouble.
MS really does support their OSes quite well and it really isn't a big deal to get them working and up to date, so long as they are still under support (2000 is not patched anymore, for example).
"..things aren't as rosy as they used to be. ... the entire PC industry could move to Asia in the next few years."
So a shitload of people who live in places called "third world" only a generation ago are now making their living doing something better than stoop labor in a paddy field, and this is "not as rosy as [it] used to be"?
Come up with a new and better technology if you don't like being undercut by the up-and-comers.
> however you try to spin in the Linux in Android is the same Linux[ish] as the Linux in...Ubuntu.
well that sure sounds like....a tablet/desktop hybrid nightmare!
No that is what you call a modular OS :)
I think that Linux did well because big companies needed a reliable Unix like OS for their industrial computers, and didn't want to be at the mercy of any Microsoft like company. Paying the linux kernel guys, and sending in their own coders from time to time worked out quite well. It also worked with Apache. The Desktop Environment, and all its little devices, was not as important, and it shows. The architecture of KDE and Gnome as of several years ago, show they did not learn the lessons of the 80s and 90s. I wish the FOSS world would be honest about its suckiness.
Fortunately, FOSS works good enough to make dedicated web browsing machines.
Given the general low quality from the Asia-specific machines(aside from Japan home-market-only hardware if you want to count them as such), this means attention to hardware quality goes out the window. It will be made with no attention to First World concepts such as quality or performance.
That and expect more Engrish in GB2312 to accompany that junk - since we couldnt pursue a national security exception when this started with IBM's spinoff with their PC division.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You're kidding, right?
Asians are some of the MOST greedy people around - you've never done business until you've done it in Asia.
They will bulldoze a seller to save a few pennies - paying full price is for chumps. Ever wonder why people use the crappy capacitors that'll fail early? That's why - unless you demand top quality components, they'll sub in the cheapest.
And labor? Really? You think Apple demands that Foxconn mistreats its workers?
Those MBAs filled their pockets while outsourcing production to China, tech support to India and finally R&D to China.
The logical next step is for consumers to outsource the management and buy directly from the factories in China.
The industry didn't learn a thing when Ford rocketed Toyota onto the global stage by outsourcing to them in the 70s and 80s. Toyota passed Ford years ago.
Then Apple did it to themselves outsourcing iPhone production to Samsung.
Take a long hard look at the companies created by engineers, programmers and inventers.
Then take a long hard look at the companies destroyed by MBAs.
Serious question here. What is the USA doing wrong, and what of that are things that other countries are not doing?
Futurist Traditionalism