Blackstone Drops Dell Bid, Cites Declining PC Market 137
An anonymous reader writes "The Blackstone Group has notified Dell's board that it has ended its bid for the company after performing 'due diligence' on Dell's books. The private equity firm gave two reasons for its withdrawal in a letter to the special committee of the board reviewing privatization offers: the 'unprecedented 14 percent market decline in PC volume in the first quarter of 2013' and 'the rapidly eroding financial profile of Dell.' IBM's recently announced intention of withdrawing from the x86 server market may have also spooked investors. Blackstone was one of two outside bidders that emerged after founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners announced a deal to take the company private for $24.4 billion. The remaining bidders did not comment on Blackstone's withdrawal; however, the Bloomberg piece notes that Dell's original deal with Silver Lake Partners contains language preventing the latter from backing out."
Re:This says it all... (Score:3, Informative)
And since PC sales growth has stagnated
No, not just the rate of growth. PC *sales* are in rapid decline, as in, fewer devices are being sold year over year, and this trend is expected to accelerate.
Quarterly Shipments Drop 14% as Windows 8 Fails to Stem Advance of iPads [wsj.com]
PC Sales in Steep Decline [forbes.com]
Intel Corp said its current-quarter revenue would decline as much as 8 percent and trimmed its 2013 capital spending plans, as personal computer sales drop due to the growing popularity of tablets and smartphones. [yahoo.com]
And about a million others. Average consumers are sick of the PC, and most of their needs can be served well by smartphones and tablets, which are much easier for them to use. Thus, that is where the market now goes. Couple that with a general dislike for Windows 8, and there's very little chance of anything but the bottom falling out, as the world shifts to mobile.
The fingers-in-ears from some quarters reminds me very well of how the 68000-based workstation community reacted to the rise of PCs back in the day: utter refusal to recognize what was happening.
Re:Then who instead of Dell? (Score:4, Informative)
just buy the model you want from whoever happens to make it. they all source parts from same companies and past performance on not having exploding caps(or other quality issues) is no guarantee whatsoever that the next batch they buy is any better, as shown by dell and others. acer used to have all their hinges break from their laptops for a year, but that again could not be guessed by looking at their models prior and after those.
what I'm trying to say is that brand loyalty is just a recipe for the brand to sell you shit.
I agree about not having "brand loyalty", but disagree about all being the same in terms of quality. In my experience the Lenovo Thinkpads fx are certainly more consistently solidly built and have less issues than other PC laptops. A long time ago Toshiba had a similar thing going for it, but lost it. If Samsung should prove to be able to step up (they are making good attempts in their top end), I'd be happy to switch to Samsung over Lenovo, so not married to Lenovo by any means.
Even as a PC user I admit that same argument can be made for Macbooks, even if they too are just using standard PC components and Chinese production, there is a build quality difference vs the cheapest PCs.
Re:It's dead Jim (Score:3, Informative)