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Dell history
Dell company history timeline
We’ve achieved a great deal since 1984.
Dell Inc. was started by University of Texas freshman Michael Dell in the year 1984.
Michael Dell founded Dell Computer Corporation, doing business as PCs Limited, in 1984 while a student at the University of Texas at Austin.
In 1985 the Microsoft Corporation introduced Microsoft Windows, a graphical user interface that gave MS-DOS-based computers many of the same capabilities of the Macintosh.
In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design — the "Turbo PC", sold for US$795 — containing an Intel 8088-compatible processor running at a speed of 8 MHz.
In 1986 E. Lee Walker became the president of the company in order to help the company sustain its explosive growth over the years.
Also in 1987, the company set up its first operations in Ireland; eleven more international operations followed within the next four years.
In 1987 sales had reached $160 million.
By 1987 Dell held a dominant position in the mail-order market, but it was clear that the firm had to move beyond mail order if it was to continue growing.
The company dropped the PC's Limited name in 1987 to become Dell Computer Corporation and began expanding globally.
In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share.
The company changed its name to "Dell Computer Corporation" in 1988.
Early in 1988 the firm formed various divisions to raise its profile among corporate, government, and educational buyers.
In 1989, Dell Computer set up its first on-site-service programs in order to compensate for the lack of local retailers prepared to act as service centers.
In 1989, Dell had sales nearing $260 million in the United States and $40 in the U.K. Dell was more of a marketing company than it was a hardware company.
Dell released its first notebook computer, the 316LT, in 1989.
By mid-1989 Dell had finished initial attempts at graphics hardware, giving it inroads into the higher end of the PC market.
Dell became the sixth largest PC maker in the United States--up from number 22 in 1989--and retained a staff of 2,100.
In 1989, Dell Computer set up its first on-site service programs in order to compensate for the lack of local retailers prepared to act as service centers.
By 1990, Dell began growing worldwide with manufacturing facilities in Italy, France and Ireland.
In 1990, Dell Computer tried selling its products indirectly through warehouse clubs and computer superstores, but met with little success, and the company re-focused on its more successful direct-to-consumer sales model.
1991: Dell introduces its first notebook PC.
Dell moved aggressively into markets outside of the United States, including Latin America, where Xerox began to sell Dell computers in 1992.
In 1992, Fortune included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company at that time.
By 1993 Dell’s sales had touched $2 billion.
The firm was projected to hold a 3.5 percent share of the PC market in 1993, but Digital Equipment Corporation, whose focus was minicomputers, nevertheless topped Dell as the biggest computer mail-order company.
1993: Dell establishes subsidiaries in Australia and Japan.
Margins at retail were thin at best and Dell left the reseller channel in 1994.
The company takes sales online in 1996, setting the bar for ecommerce worldwide.
Expansion continued on many fronts in 1996.
Rollins had consulted for Dell while employed with the consulting firm Bain & Company, before joining Dell in 1996 as a senior vice-president.
1996: The company begins selling over the Internet.
By the time Dell sold its ten millionth computer in 1997, it was a close fourth behind IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Compaq in the computer industry.
In early 1997, Dell created an internal sales and marketing group dedicated to serving the home market and introduced a product line designed especially for individual users.
In 1998 Dell had reached the second spot on the PC manufacturer’s list and had reported net profits of $940 million.
In 1998 it established a production and customer center in Xiamen, China, raising the number of its overseas plants to three.
The company also expanded its Internet offerings in 1999 with Dellnet, an Internet access service for Dell customers.
Dell surpassed Compaq to become the largest PC manufacturer in 1999.
In the year 2000, Dell’s total revenues stood at $25 billion. It opened its website www.dell.com in the year 1999 to make it easier for customers to view and purchase their products.
In the year 2000, Dell’s total revenues stood at $25 billion.
2001: The company gains the leading share of the global PC market.
Dell targeted other higher-margin sectors as well. It continued its push into the storage market in late 2001 by entering into an alliance with EMC Corporation to develop a new line of data-storage systems, and it entered the market for low-end networking gear used by small businesses, launching its PowerConnect line of network switches in 2001.
With businesses keeping a tight rein on their PC spending, Dell in 2002 attempted to gain further sales from consumers by setting up kiosks at shopping malls where customers could see and try out Dell computers, printers, and other products before placing their orders online or by phone.
Operating costs made up only 10 percent of Dell's $35 billion in revenue in 2002, compared with 21 percent of revenue at Hewlett-Packard, 25 percent at Gateway, and 46 percent at Cisco.
In 2002, Dell expanded its product line to include televisions, handhelds, digital audio players, and printers.
Dell's reputation for poor customer service, since 2002, which was exacerbated as it moved call centers offshore and as its growth outstripped its technical support infrastructure, came under increasing scrutiny on the Web.
In 2003 the company was renamed Dell Inc. to signify a move into the broader consumer electronics market.
Early in 2003, in a trial run, the company set up its first Dell store-within-a-store inside of a Sears, Roebuck & Company outlet.
The corporation's widening interests took a quite concrete form in mid-2003 through the shortening of the firm's name to simply Dell Inc.
In 2003, at the annual company meeting, the stockholders approved changing the company name to "Dell Inc." to recognize the company's expansion beyond computers.
Founder Michael Dell holds 12 percent of the company and will remain chairman of the company after stepping down as CEO in July 2004.
Dell's diversification, coupled with large increases in shipments of high-profit-margin products such as servers, notebook computers, and storage equipment, propelled the company to new heights in 2004.
In 2004, the company announced that it would build a new assembly-plant near Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the city and county provided Dell with $37.2 million in incentive packages; the state provided approximately $250 million in incentives and tax breaks.
In 2005, while earnings and sales continued to rise, sales growth slowed considerably, and the company stock lost 25% of its value that year.
CNet's News.com on August 17, 2006, cited Dell's CEO Kevin Rollins as attributing the move to AMD processors to lower costs and to AMD technology.
On October 23, 2006, Dell announced new AMD-based servers — the PowerEdge 6950 and the PowerEdge SC1435.
On November 1, 2006, Dell's website began offering notebooks based on AMD processors (the Inspiron 1501 with a 15.4-inch (390 mm) display) with the choice of a single-core MK-36 processor, dual-core Turion X2 chips or Mobile Sempron.
By 2006, Dell had spent $100 million in just a few months to improve on this and rolled out DellConnect to answer customer inquiries more quickly.
2006 marked the first year that Dell's growth was slower than the PC industry as a whole.
The call-center had opened in 2006 after the city of Ottawa won a bid to host it.
When Dell acquired Alienware early in 2006, some Alienware systems had AMD chips.
After four out of five quarterly earnings reports were below expectations, Rollins resigned as president and CEO on January 31, 2007, and founder Michael Dell assumed the role of CEO again.
On March 28, 2007, Dell announced that it would begin shipping some desktops and laptops with Linux pre-installed, although it did not specify which distribution of Linux or which hardware would lead.
On May 24, 2007, Dell started selling models with Ubuntu Linux 7.04 pre-installed: a laptop, a budget computer, and a high-end PC.
On May 1, 2007, Dell announced it would ship the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
On June 27, 2007, Dell announced on its Direct2Dell blog that it planned to offer more pre-loaded systems (the new Dell Inspiron desktops and laptops). After the IdeaStorm site supported extending the bundles beyond the US market, Dell later announced more international marketing.
The $24.4 billion buyout was projected to be the largest leveraged buyout backed by private equity since the 2007 financial crisis.
On January 24, 2008, Dell in Germany, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom launched a second laptop, an XPS M1330 with Ubuntu 7.10, for 849 euro or GBP 599 upwards.
On February 18, 2008, Dell announced that the Inspiron 1525 would have Ubuntu as an optional operating system.
On April 23, 2008, Dell announced the closure of one of its biggest Canadian call-centers in Kanata, Ontario, terminating approximately 1100 employees, with 500 of those redundancies effective on the spot, and with the official closure of the center scheduled for the summer.
As of 2008[update] it held the second spot in computer-sales within the industry behind Hewlett-Packard.
On January 8, 2009, Dell announced the closure of its manufacturing plant in Limerick, Ireland, with the loss of 1,900 jobs and the transfer of production to its plant in Łodź in Poland.
As of November 2009 Dell shipped the Inspiron Mini laptops with Ubuntu version 8.04.
In December 2012, Dell suffered its first decline in holiday sales in five years, despite the introduction of Windows 8.
As of 2012, Dell has revenue of $57 billion and more than 105,000 employees.
The growing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers instead of PCs drove Dell's consumer segment to an operating loss in Q3 2012.
Dell remained the second-most profitable PC vendor, as it took 13 percent of operating profits in the PC industry during Q4 2012, behind Apple's Mac that took 45 percent, seven percent at Hewlett Packard, six percent at Lenovo and Asus, and one percent for Acer.
After several weeks of rumors, which started around January 11, 2013, Dell announced on February 5, 2013, that it had struck a $24.4 billion leveraged buyout deal, that would have delisted its shares from the NASDAQ and Hong Kong Stock Exchange and taken it private.
In May 2013, Dell joined his board in voting for his offer.
Since opening at the end of 2013, over 5,000 children have visited the Centre.
Once the acquisition closes Dell will again publish quarterly financial results, having ceased these on going private in 2013.
The Wall Street Journal estimated that in 2014 Dell had revenue of $27.3 billion from personal computers and $8.9bn from servers, while EMC had $16.5bn from EMC II, $1bn from RSA Security, $6bn from VMware, and $230 million from Pivotal Software.
On October 12, 2015, Dell Inc. announced its intent to acquire EMC Corporation in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $67 billion, which has been considered the largest-ever acquisition in the technology sector.
On November 19, 2015, Dell, alongside ARM Holdings, Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft, and Princeton University, founded the OpenFog Consortium, to promote interests and development in fog computing.
On September 7, 2016, Dell Inc. completed the merger with EMC Corp., which involved the issuance of $45.9 billion in debt and $4.4 billion common stock.
In 2016 the company and an investment firm acquired EMC, an American corporation that specialized in data storage.
In 2017, Dell released the AlienWare 17.
In July 2018, Dell announced intentions to become a publicly traded company again by paying $21.7 billion in both cash and stock to buy back shares from its stake in VMware, offering shareholders roughly 60 cents on the dollar as part of the deal.
As of August 2019, Dell Technologies had a net value of $23.4 billion.
As of April 2021, Michael Dell's net worth was estimated to be over $50 billion.
As of 2021, Dell continues to offer select laptops and workstations with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed, under the "Developer Edition" moniker.
2022 back to school sale
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Dell competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM | 1911 | $62.8B | 270,000 | 3,736 |
| Intel | 1968 | $53.1B | 121,100 | 348 |
| HP | 1939 | $53.6B | 53,000 | 405 |
| Adobe | 1982 | $21.5B | 11,847 | 1,081 |
| Asus | 1989 | $14.1B | 14,700 | 25 |
| 1998 | $350.0B | 139,995 | 3,889 | |
| Juniper Networks | 1996 | $5.1B | 9,400 | - |
| Librato, Inc. | - | $13.0B | 63,800 | - |
| Xerox | 1906 | $6.2B | 24,700 | 502 |
| Amd | 1969 | $25.8B | 15,500 | 551 |
Dell history FAQs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Dell, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Dell. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Dell. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Dell. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Dell and its employees or that of Zippia.
Dell may also be known as or be related to Dell, Dell Corporation, Dell Corporation LTD, Dell Inc, Dell Inc. and PC's Limited (1984-1987).