AllThingsD » Brian Gladden

Dell Adds 905 Employees to North Carolina Labor Pool

John Paczkowski — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:15:17 +0000

So much for Dell’s personal computer manufacturing operations in the United States. On Wednesday, the PC maker said it would close its plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., as part of a long-term restructuring that will see it cut costs by $4 billion by the end of fiscal 2011. Over 900 employees will lose their jobs as a result.

“This was a difficult but necessary decision to improve the company’s competitive position,” Dell (DELL) spokesman David Frink said. “It is not a commentary on workers in North Carolina or workers in the United States.”

Of course not. As Dell CFO Brian Gladden said during the company’s last earnings call, “Our cost reduction programs have never been more crucial than during this weaker demand environment.”

Still, it’s unfortunate to see the company forced to shift work once done in the states to lower-cost contract manufacturers abroad. This is, after all, Dell’s third big closure in recent memory. The company stopped desktop manufacturing in Lebanon, Tenn., earlier this year, and in 2008, it shuttered a desktop plant in Austin, Texas.

App Store: 1.5 Billion Served

John Paczkowski — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:00:24 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Unlike Demand for Dell Stock, Demand for Dell Products Has Stabilized

John Paczkowski — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:27:40 +0000

Things are starting to look up for Dell–well, as much as they can for a company so beaten into submission by the econalypse. The company said Monday that demand for its products appears to have stabilized and that it expects to report “a slight sequential revenue increase” for its second fiscal quarter, which ends July 31. “We continue to believe that customers are deferring IT purchases, and that we will see demand return to more typical levels at some point,” CFO Brian Gladden said in a statement.

Welcome news, right? Sadly for Dell (DELL), it was tempered by the revelation that the company’s gross margins will fall short of Wall Street expectations. And investors weren’t too happy to hear about that, sending Dell’s shares down more than three percent in late trading. The announcement comes a day before the company’s scheduled meeting with financial analysts and four days before its annual shareholders gathering.