Dell downgrade spells trouble for commodity PC players

Stan Beer
Sunday, 23 July 2006 16:36

Your IT - Home IT

Dell's earnings forecast downgrade has sent shivers through the collective spines of the commodity hardware market, with strong signals that a slow market combined with fierce pricing competition is going to squeeze margins.

Aside from slowing demand in the corporate sector, there appears to a general all round weakness in the PC hardware space, with both Intel and AMD posting weak results.

The pessimistic outlook for the PC hardware makers stands in stark contrast to the outstanding results posted by Apple, which posted massive increases in earnings and revenues.

While much of Apple's financial boost came from a huge increase in iPod sales, there was a 12% increase in sales of Macintosh computers, an indication of the success of the company's new Intel Mac range.