Chinadaily.com.cn: Lenovo focuses on mobile business, so what is Dell's mobile strategy?
Midha: We believe that tablets are an extension of notebooks. Tablet with a keyboard is like a notebook in many ways. So we're committed to tablets. We have launched some innovative and exciting products recently. Response to those products from the market is great. Another exciting part is that we recently announced MDM (Mobile Device Management), so you can see the mobile device management, security, tablets, PCs, thin client. We continue to move forward, we also have a client cloud technology, which enables anyone using a smartphone to access information in a secure way. That product is available.
Our strategy is going to be very much focused on tablets, PCs, and thin client from a hardware perspective, and focus on mobile device management, security, and client cloud technology from a software perspective. We also recently demonstrated a product to let you access secure datacenter information on a TV by any devices with a USB port, and again, BYOD is a growing trend and a lot of work has to be done on data centers as well as on the client side. From an end user computing point of view, it is connected anywhere anytime in a secure and consistent manner.
Chinadaily.com.cn: Dell China is involved in a voluntary separation program, and there're some rumors about lay-offs. Is that true (particularly in the Chinese market)?
Midha: We're at a stage where we're making some businesses efficient and investing in some businesses. So when you do this, you would have an optimization process we have to go through, and that is what we're going through. I think the business for us in Asia is growing, and typically when that happens, you would always see a lot more opportunities for our people, and that's what we can talk about -- taking care of the customer, creating opportunities for our people, and optimizing business. Because we can continue to do these three things, the rest is all the details. I don't see a huge impact to China. But again, that is a voluntary program so I don't have a number of how people are reacting to it.
Chinadaily.com.cn: Most consumers still regard Dell as a PC giant, what is your outlook on the Chinese market for PC business?
Midha: PC market globally last year was about negative 9 percent growth, and this year is expected to be negative 1 to negative 2 percent growth. One of the pieces that is probably not clear in this headline number is that business PC is doing much better, while the consumer PC may have some negative impact. Globally our focus remains quite significantly on business-to-business side, it's more than 80% of our business, so we believe that this is the market we feel good about.
The IT growth rate (the spending total) is about 3-6% in China, and we have tremendous offerings for our customers to help them optimize their IT spending and really transform their businesses from end user computing (which is PC), datacenter (which is server and storage), networking, or from services and software perspective, and if the IT spending growth is 3-6% percent, we feel pretty good about the market.
