The New York Times writes how the tide has turned for Dell:
The growth market, for one, is no longer in the United States, but in China, India and Eastern Europe, where it is harder to reach a mass market online. Retail sales of desktop PC’s now outpace laptops, which consumers are more likely to want to test the heft of before they buy.
More than anything else, Dell’s competitors have changed. In particular, Hewlett-Packard is no longer the bloated and slow-moving company it was six years ago. Mark V. Hurd, Hewlett’s chief executive hired in early 2005, has cut costs and focused his company on profitability while speeding its growth in printing and corporate data centers as well as personal computers, which in 2002 lost the company $400 million. Last year, it made $660 million selling PC’s.
