Tech History Trivia: Dell

Sometimes all it takes to become an international PC juggernaut is $1000 and a vision. That’s what Michael Dell brought to the table when he founded PC’s Limited at the mere age of nineteen. Since then Dell has grown to become the third largest PC retailer in the world and the second largest in the US. Many businesses operate solely on Dell computer projects, which is why ComputerCare is proud to be an official service provider for the brand.

Exponential Growth

Michael Dell started as a pre-med freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, but he had a genius idea: make a PC company focused on customized products. In 1984, he began building and selling IBM-compatible custom units from his dorm room, but by the end of the school year, he had obtained his $1000 expansion capital from his family and left college for the entrepreneurial journey.

Within one year, his small company had designed and built the first completely Dell-designed computer system, the Turbo PC, featuring an Intel® 8088 processor running at 8MHz, a 10MB hard drive and a 5.25″ floppy drive. With a new business model that marketed products in national computer magazines for direct sale to consumers with custom assemblies for each unit according to a selection of options. This apparently filled a big hole in the PC market of the day, since the young company grossed $73 million in just one year. By 1987, the company was already able to open its first international subsidiary in the UK.

One Decade to Number One

The 90s was a good decade for Dell, seeing them launch their sales platform online, expand into the Asian market, and opening a second Texas-based manufacturing center. By 1997, less than fifteen years after its founding, Dell shipped its 10-millionth personal computer.

New workstation and storage products fleshed out the Dell line of products, and allowed the company to announce its plan to open international manufacturing centers in Ireland and Brazil. By the end of 1999, Dell reached these milestones – incredible for such a young company: No. 1 in PCs in the U.S., No. 1 worldwide in PCs for large and medium businesses and No. 1 in worldwide workstation shipments.

The New Millennium

In 2000, Dell’s internet sales reached $40 million per day, continuing their trajectory of success. The following decade saw the company add a whole range of new network, home office, and business products, transforming its business model into a single source of electronics for consumers.

Multiple acquisitions and forays into new areas of business such as data centers and enterprise solutions allow Dell to continue to grow and expand in the global marketplace. In 2016, Dell combined with EMC (a successful data storage and enterprise solution company) to become Dell Technologies, one of the top five PC and business hardware companies in the world.Do you power your business on Dell products, or manage your Bay Area or Seattle side hustle on a Dell PC? Either way we can help you with maintaining and repairing your device(s). Get in touch today to talk about our business services for Dell computers.