appleasiseeit

Could a Dell/Apple Partnership Work?

<blockquote>Appl... could consider a PC design that retains that unfari advantage containing a circuit board or electronic chip that isn't otherwise available</blockquo...

It doesn't make sense to me, Apple switched from PowerPC to the ubiquitous x86 architecture, and now they would use a custom chip for an Apple branded PC? What kind of economies of scale can you achieve with a custom CPU? If the CPU isn't otherwise available, what problem does it solve for potential customers? You can buy an Intel Mac today, it will run Mac OS X and Windows. Dual-boot, virtualization, you name it…

<blockquote>Dell might offer Apple an instant invasion of traditional Microsoft strongholds. Selling dual-platform Apple PCs, at a premium, to government and business, may or may not appeal to the market. But it’s all I could come up with.</blockquote&g...

As far as I know, Apple is not that interested in the enterprise market. For its part, Dell is waging a never-ending price war, where the only way to gain share is to slash prices. During the latest conference call Dell's CFO said: "We priced aggressively to grow the business with the resulting significant adverse impact to our results." Dell was too aggressive on price; even though the volume of shipments is increasing, revenues are not growing fast enough due to price pressure.

It looks like Dell needs to balance share gains and revenue growth, I think that Mac OS would be great to differentiate Dell's high margin consumer PCs like the $2,999 XPS M2010. But if the goal is to sell 'sleak' PCs in the $1,000+ price range, Apple is already doing fine with its own hardware. Apple doesn't need Dell to sell personal computers at a premium, why should Dell be allowed to siphon Apple's hardware profits? I try to be open-minded but I don't see a Dell/Apple partnership happening.