October 6, 1997. Dell is the number one PC seller in the world, and are just over a decade old. The young company can seem to do no wrong, and has returned investors a 2,800% gain in the past 5 years.
Apple had already seen it’s heyday in the previous decade, and has now fallen on hard times. Over the same 5 year time period, the older company experienced massive turbulence, and had lost around 50% of it’s value.
Michael Dell gets on stage and is presented with the question: now that Steve Jobs is back at Apple, if you were him, what would you do to fix the company?
“What would I do? I’d shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders”
Fast forward 13 years. Since then, Apple has seen a 3,500% gain in it’s value. Dell, on the other hand, has seen almost none, at the moment it stands at a mere 10%.
When looking at a shorter, 5 year time period, things look even bleaker for Dell: a 60% loss in value (meanwhile, Apple is around 500%).
So to Michael Dell: “Your company has lost 60% of it’s value over the past 5 years. What will you do to fix it?”
I’m guessing his answer won’t be what it was 13 years ago.
References:
cnet
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