Once upon a Time Giant in the PC and Laptop Industry, Dell Inc is serious to get back into the Notebook and Tablets Game. Dell introduced a slew of attractive new notebook and tablet models aimed at making a comeback in the PC industry. The product lineup at the post-privatization event looks ambitious and aggressive.
Dell launched a new tablet brand called Venue, which covers 8”~11” screen sizes running both Android OS and Windows 8. The Android tablets are thin and light and start from a breakthrough price point of US$149 (Intel+Android) and the Win8 tablets start at a mere US$299 (Intel+Win8), much lower than the cheapest Surface at US$449.
In notebooks, Dell refreshed its high-end XPS consumer products, which are thin, light and wrapped in aluminum metal casing giving a premium product look-and-feel. The new lineup includes the flagship XPS 13” and XPS 15” models, along with a new XPS 11” that can be folded 360 degrees to enable multiple angles for the tablet mode (similar to Lenovo’s Yoga form factor). The XPS all run Win8 and Intel Haswell Core-I CPUs with touch as an option and start at US$999. Such product offerings make clear Dell’s intention to get back into the PC market.
Dell’s product launch undermines that view, suggesting competition in the PC industry will intensify over the next few
years. We believe that Asus gained share in the consumer PC segment in 2011-12 as Dell/HP retreated. With Dell reverting to a more aggressive PC strategy, easy share gains by Asus/Acer will likely become a thing of the past. We
believe Dell’s PC strategy will renew pricing pressure in the consumer PC segment, to which Asus and Acer have large exposure.