Market cap

* For banks, enterprise value is substituted with market cap. Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P.

Performance of the brand

Dell is an American multinational information technology corporation that develops, sells and supports computers and computer peripherals. Founded by Michael Dell in 1984 the business has grown massively with over 100,000 employees worldwide and 2011 revenues of above $61bn. Using innovative supply chain management to build customisable personal computers on demand to consumers, Dell has now moved into providing business solutions and support as well as storage and servers.

PC sales down

Dell’s core business is selling computers to consumers through their website and phone systems. Over half of revenue comes from personal computers and laptops. However there are signs that the PC market has reached its peak and demand by consumers for PCs is falling, particularly in Dell’s home market, the USA, where according to research group Gartner, Q1 2011 sales fell by 6.1%.

Consumers seem to be switching away from laptops towards tablet computers such as Apple’s iPad. Worryingly enough for Dell their foray into the tablet market has been so far unsuccessful with their tablets and smartphones not selling well.

HP to quit

But it’s not all bad news for Dell. Rivals Hewlett-Packard, the PC and laptop market leaders, look set to abandon the consumer market leaving their 17.9% share up for grabs. Second place Dell currently have 12.9% of the market and will look to beat off competitors Acer, Lenova and Toshiba for the largest portion of HP’s pie.

Dell move to business, servers and the cloud

Much like HP and IBM before them, Dell are looking to increase the level diversification and add themselves to the growing list of technology companies retreating from the consumer market and moving into the business solutions industry. 12% of Dell’s revenue comes from servers and networking and they are the third largest server provider behind top dogs IBM and second ranked HP.

Acquisitions develop corporate offerings

Dell’s recent acquisitions highlight their efforts to emulate the success of IBM.

Perot Systems, bought for £2.8bn in 2009, was a technology services in the industries of health care, government, manufacturing, banking and insurance among others, and has now been brought in under the Dell brand.

In 2010 Dell acquired Compellent Technologies, Inc for $960m. As a global provider of enterprise storage systems, the renamed Dell Compellent brand has expanded Dell’s corporate offerings further.

80% of Dell’s revenue comes from sources other than consumers. As Dell become more established in the corporate and government sectors the importance of consumers to Dell’s bottom line may decline. However consumers will remain strategically important. Dell do not have IBM’s reputation for innovation and having Dell’s home business will be needed in order to strengthen the Dell brand amongst those that will sign off the large business and government contracts.

The power to do more

Dell’s slogan is about selling services to increase efficiency and productivity allowing users to spend more time on the things that matter rather than on administrative tasks.

League tables

Dell appears in the following brand league tables:

Rank 77 in the Global 500 2011.
Rank 75 in the Global 500 2010.
Rank 67 in the Global 500 2009.
Rank 18 in the Global 500 2008.
Rank 20 in the Global 250 2007.