Dell Sales Flourish After Going Private

By Douglas A. McIntyre October 9, 2014 6:46 am EDT

Maybe Michael Dell and his associates paid investors too little when he took the company he founded private. Its sales, at least those of its core PC business, have flourished. Despite a contraction of the global PC industry, Dell has gained both sales and market share.

According to new data from Gartner researchers, global PC sales continue to languish:

Worldwide PC shipments reached 79.4 million units in the third quarter of 2014, a 0.5 percent decline from the third quarter of last year.

“Growth in the mature markets was offset by a decline in shipments in emerging markets, similar to what was seen in the second quarter of 2014,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “Positive results in Western Europe and North America can be a sign of gradual recovery for the PC industry.

“Consumers’ attention is slowly going back to PC purchases as tablet adoption peaked with mainstream consumers. The transition from PCs to tablets has faded as tablet penetration has reached the 40-50 percent range.” In contrast, weakness in the emerging market reflects the saturation in selected consumer segments where they can afford PCs. In the meantime, consumers who don’t have PCs will likely buy low priced tablet. This is a one of the major reasons for the slow growth in PC shipments in the emerging market.”

On the other hand, the leading manufacturers have increased share, leaving a more modest part of the industry to the smaller companies in the sector.

For the first time, the sum of the top five vendors’ share reached two-thirds of the worldwide PC shipments. All top 5 vendors showed stronger growth compared to the industry average. Scale is one important success criteria for vendors to survive in the PC market. Some vendors have already scaled back or have withdrawn from the PC business — namely, Sony and Samsung — and Toshiba joined them in 3Q14.

Dell ranks third on the list. Its global market share rose from 11.6% in the third quarter of last year to 12.8% in the most recent quarter, which represented total shipments of 10,185,964. U.S. rival Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) did much worse.

Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q14 (Units)

Note: Data include desk-based PCs and mobile PCs, including x86 tablets equipped with Windows 8, but exclude Chromebooks and other tablets.

Source: Gartner (October 2014)

In its home market — the United States — Dell did even better:

Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q14 (Units)

Note: Data include desk-based PCs and mobile PCs, including x86 tablets equipped with Windows 8, but exclude Chromebooks and other tablets.

Source: Gartner (October 2014)

Pessimists about Dell’s life after being a public company appear to have been wrong.

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