Dell Inc. history, profile and history video
Michael Dell founded the company in 1984 from his Texas dorm room, starting a new computer business under the name of PC’s Limited. Today Dell is the world’s #3 supplier of PCs (behind #1 HP and #2 Lenovo). Dell provides a broad range of technology products for the consumer, education, enterprise, and government sectors. In addition to its line of desktop and notebook PCs, Dell offers network servers, data storage systems, printers, Ethernet switches, and peripherals, such as displays and projectors. Its 25-year history of running as a public company came to end in September when shareholders voted in favor of Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners’ $25 billion bid to take Dell private.”
“Dell History
Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created PC’s Limited while a student of the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components. Dell dropped out of school to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting about $300,000 in expansion-capital from his family. In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the Turbo PC, which sold for $795. PC’s Limited advertised its systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers and custom assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. The company grossed more than $73 million in its first year of operation.
In 1986, Michael Dell brought in Lee Walker, a 51-year-old venture capitalist, as president and chief operating officer, to serve as Michael’s mentor and implement Michael’s ideas for growing the company. Walker was also instrumental in recruiting members to the board of directors when the company went public in 1988. Walker retired in 1990 due to health, and Michael Dell hired Morton Meyerson, former CEO and president of Electronic Data Systems to transform the company from a fast-growing medium-sized firm into a billion-dollar enterprise.
The company changed its name to Dell Computer Corporation in 1988 and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dell’s market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share. In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world’s 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever.
In 1993, to complement its own direct sales channel, Dell planned to sell PCs at big-box retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, which would have brought in an additional $125 million in annual revenue. However, Bain consultant Kevin Rollins persuaded Michael Dell to pull out of these deals, believing they would be money losers in the long run. Indeed, margins at retail were thin at best and Dell left the reseller channel in 1994. Rollins would soon join Dell full-time and eventually become the company President and CEO.”
On October 12, 2015, Dell Inc. announced its intent to acquire EMC. This acquisition would combine Dell’s enterprise server, personal computer, and mobile businesses with EMC’s enterprise storage business in a significant Vertical merger of IT giants.
On September 7, 2016, Dell Inc. completed the merger with EMC Corp. (which later became Dell EMC).
After the merger, Dell was re-organized with a new parent company, Dell Technologies; Dell’s consumer and workstation businesses are internally referred to as the Dell Client Solutions Group (CSG), and is one of the company’s three main business divisions alongside Dell EMC and VMware.
*Information from Forbes.com and Wikipedia.org
**Video published on YouTube by “Business Casual“