Despite warnings from commentators who said the Chinese market was not mature enough for PC direct sales, Dell Computer Corp has managed to achieve profitability well ahead of schedule says chairman Michael Dell. Our business this year in China is going to be several hundred million dollars in revenue, he told a news conference but would not put a figure on either sales or profit except to say sales in China were setting records for the company.
Dell launched direct sales in China in August last year amid considerable cynicism from the industry. Its success since then, says Dell, shows quite decisively that the direct model works extremely well in China. He said that second quarter sales in China were up 561% year-on-year lifting Dell to seventh in China’s top PC vendors by shipments and putting China on the verge of breaking into its top 10 markets worldwide. Most foreign PC makers have been losing ground to domestic manufacturers in the past two years with only Dell and Sony significantly bucking this trend. I believe that the China market is going to be absolutely critical to our future, Dell said.
Dell launched a manufacturing plant in the Southeastern city of Xiamen last November and is in the early development stages of a second Xiamen location.
