Shocker: Dell Dives Into Ad Biz

Here's a little attention grabber. Dell's getting into the ad biz.

Last week, the PC power said it would, along with ad giant WPP Group, will pony up $4.5 billion (yes BILLION) to build an organization to market Dell's product portfolio.

Now, one might think that a company with accounting woes and lots of bad press around burning laptops or bad batteries or flagging PC sales might want to stick to its knitting. You know, to building good PCs. But nooooooo.

Just last week researcher DisplaySearch reported that Acer shipped more notebooks -- a half a million more -- than Dell last quarter. HP had already lapped Dell as the world's biggest PC maker as of last year.

Given all that, wouldn't Dell be better served by concentrating on its (I can't believe I'm about to type these odious words but here goes) core competencies?

Barbara Darrow, industry editor of Redmond Magazine, Redmond Developer News and Redmond Channel Partner, can be reached at [email protected]

Posted by Barbara Darrow on December 10, 2007


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