This May Rock the PC World (Dell into Wal-Mart)
Dell plans to begin selling desktop PCs in Wal-Mart Stores in the next few weeks, the first move in a major departure from its decades-long sales strategy.
Wal-Mart plans to sell the Dimension E521 in more than 3,000 retail locations in the United States, Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis West, told CNET News.com.
“Finally, Dell has addressed one of its main problems by giving customers a chance to touch and feel its products,” Bhavnani said. “Dell’s going to be touching a lot of people who weren’t necessarily looking to buy a PC.”
The move follows a pronouncement by founder and CEO Michael Dell that the PC maker would be making a major push in commercial reseller and retail channels.
Bringing “Always Low Prices” to PCs might be making a few electronics-only retailers and other PC manufacturers a bit nervous. I think the big questions are how many customers need hand-holding before they make their decision to buy, and what kind of installation and post-sales support will be available.
And it is also fascinating that Dell, as of yesterday, is selling PCs and laptops with the free Ubuntu OS, which is a version of Linux.
dell.com/open
Businesses, students, and political campaigns could save a lot of money by avoiding Microsoft and running linux. And between OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird, and services provided by Google, I’ll never shell out hundreds of dollars for a copy of Office again.
Comment by Matt N. — May 25, 2007 @ 1:33 pm
If the strategy is really to introduce customers to mainstream customers, having the introduction be at low-end wal-mart with low-end machines is not the best way to go. Dell has a whole range of PC products and the E series dimensions are arguably the worst of the lot.
So I wonder if Bhavnani knows what he’s talking about. This product and location seems to me to be all about capturing a few more points of market share.
Comment by dave — May 25, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
#2, I would tend to agree. The only boxes that will sell in WM are the low end. They won’t have any PC-knowledgeable person working there except by accident.
I also have to wonder, since BB and CC are having success with Geek Squad and Firedog, how successful a typical customer going home without any of that help will be in setting things up.
If WM wanted to sell machines that a customer couldn’t screw up and will have no trouble setting up, they’d sell Macs — but Apple will probably never let them.
Comment by TBlumer — May 25, 2007 @ 10:11 pm