Dell executives yesterday pointed to growth in their own company’s PC, server and printing businesses as proof of success in a strategy that is based around organic growth in mass markets, instead of relying on niche markets or mergers.

In a dig at both IBM Corp, which is selling its PC business to China’s Lenovo, and HP, chief executive Kevin Rollins said Dell will grow into a broad-based technology provider and set Dell’s next financial milestone at $80bn in annual revenue.

Some competitors focused on hardware niches, others resorted to subsidizing PCs with printers, while others exited the PC business all together, Rollins said.

Dell’s CEO and president did not name names, but was believed to be referring, in part, to last month’s merger of HP’s struggling PC business with the successful imaging and printers unit, creating the Imaging and Personal Systems Group (IPSG).

Rollins said Dell will continue to build market share in printers during 2005, and would only begin contemplating profit towards the end of this year. Dell claimed a 110% in revenue growth in printer revenue in its last fiscal year with consumables accounting for 25% of business.

We still believe that’s the best strategy, to grow the business in unit volume. Then we will start maximizing on profit dollars, Rollin said.

In a further twist of the knife, chairman Michael Dell extended a gracious invitation to any printer suppliers who wished to enter discussions for his company to resell their hardware.

Asked by one Wall Street analyst whether Dell would consider reselling HP printers, the chairman said: We are approaching double-digit market share. If there are other suppliers who’d like to speak to us, we’d be glad to enter discussion with them.

Executives were bullish having announced record quarterly revenue that grew 16.8% to $13.4bn for the three months to January 28. Net income dropped 10.9% to $667m, or $0.26 per diluted share down from $0.29, a figure that was attributed to an $0.11 per share tax hit for bringing home foreign earnings.

Dell’s net income for the year grew 15% to $3.04bn on revenue that increased $49.2bn. Earnings per share grew $0.17 to $1.18.

Dell claimed 27% growth in its storage business year on year, 18% growth in servers and 16% growth in its PC business.