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Michael Dell vs Steve Jobs

By Ern Sheong | May 29, 2008

In 1997, at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97, when asked what he would do if he were in charge of Apple, Michael Dell told a crowd of several thousand technology execs, “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” Read more here.

Fast forward to 2008,  during an audience Q & A session at the D6 conference, someone asked him whether he could take on Steve Jobs in a fight. Dell flatly replied, “Yeah I could take him.”

Michael Dell is one funny guy.


A very amusing situation. (Source: Engadget)

But then again, another interesting article notes that an Apple is now worth four Dells.

The irony, as we noted last October, was that Apple’s (AAPL) market cap was then double that of Dell, Inc. (DELL). Since then, Apple’s value has gone on to triple and, last week, quadruple Dell’s. Here, thanks to MacDailyNews, are the market cap milestones:

* Jan. 13, 2006 Apple passes Dell: $72.13 billion vs. $71.97 billion
* July 27, 2007 Apple doubles Dell: $127.81 billion vs. $63.65 billion
* Dec. 6, 2007 Apple triples Dell: $165.66 billion vs. $54.42 billion
* May 1, 2008 Apple quadruples Dell: $158.66 billion vs. $38.97 billion

By week’s end, Apple was worth 4.04 Dells.

Of course there are reasons to it. Read more here.

A good comment from a reader in favor of Dell:

People can slam Michael all they like, but he brought affordable, custom configured, reliable PCs to the masses. That’s not sexy, but it had a major impact on the way we buy computers. If it wasn’t for his vision, we might be paying easily 50% more today and not getting the configuration we want. His direct build-to-order innovation was a paradigm shift that has been copied in the computer industry as well as by other industries. Also to be fair, Michael only recently re-assumed the CEO post after having pulled back for a few years. Let’s see what he does back at the helm before judging his performance.

I believe when he made that comment, Apple was still wandering in the wilderness. They had just pulled back from licensing their technology to 3rd parties which had turned out to be a disaster. Many people were writing Apple off back then as being too proprietary and too tied to niche markets that were getting encroached on…

I wish I could work at Dell someday, or maybe Apple or HP, and join in the fun. But I think the Dell culture suits me best =)

Topics: Business, Computers, Humour, Random | 2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Michael Dell vs Steve Jobs”

  1. Ome Says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    Same here, I wish I could work at one of those large companies. Must be pretty fun and competitive an environment. ;)

  2. Ern Sheong Says:
    May 30th, 2008 at 10:38 am

    YEAH MAN! These companies are the market leaders man

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