News

Dell Reports Fourth-Quarter Growth

• By Scott Bekker
• February 13, 2003

Dell Computer Corp. turned in a 32 percent improvement in profits for the quarter ended Jan. 31, the company reported Thursday afternoon. Dell saw net income of $603 million on revenues of about $9.7 billion for the quarter.

Kevin Rollins, Dell's president and chief operating officer, attributed the gains, which included market share gains against competitors, to Dell's approach of undercutting competitors on price.

"Customers always look for higher levels of value, particularly when economic conditions are weak. And the Dell team is exceptional at continually increasing customer value," Rollins said.

The company attributed part of its growth in profitability to increased sales of servers and storage products, both of which bring in higher margins than desktops and laptops.

Revenue from external storage systems increased 87 percent year-over-year, with the most rapid growth coming from sales of Dell-EMC systems for storage-area networks.

Dell enjoyed a 28 percent increase in shipments of PowerEdge servers, including 22 percent growth in the United States.

"The company ranks No. 1 in the U.S., No. 2 worldwide, in shipments of servers based on both Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and on Linux. Windows and Linux running on clusters of standards-based servers are increasingly being chosen as high-performance, low-cost alternatives to proprietary UNIX platforms for supercomputing applications," Dell said in a statement.