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Dell Computer Corp. on Thursday continued its strong financial showing in a weak economy with first-quarter numbers showing double-digit growth in income, revenue and shipments.
The Round Rock, Texas, company earned $598 million for the quarter ended May 2, a 31 percent jump over the $457 million earned in the same period last year.
Revenue increased 18 percent, to more than $9.53 billion, and worldwide product shipments were up 29 percent, Dell officials said during a conference call with reporters.
Chief Financial Officer Jim Schneider said Dell saw 40 percent growth in its server business, which he attributed to an industry-wide move away from Unix systems to Wintel servers. Pricing also played a factor, he said.
“Pricing continues to be aggressive,” Schneider said. “Pricing has been aggressive for over a year now. Its really a buyers market. Customers are really moving away from proprietary systems and toward standards-based systems.”
At an event in New York in April, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell took the stage with Larry Ellison, chairman and CEO of Oracle Corp., to outline their vision of the future of data centers that revolves around multiple, small industry-based servers clustered together to give users a lot of computing power in a flexible environment.
Dell also saw 65 percent growth in revenues garnered from its external storage business, where it has a partnership with EMC Corp. As part of that arrangement, Dell currently manufactures the midrange CX200 product.
There also was a 28 percent jump in the companys desktop business, and shipments of its Inspiron and Latitude notebooks jumped 31 percent in the first quarter. New Latitude notebooks powered by Intel Corp.s Centrino wireless networking technology were introduced in March.
“I think youd be hard pressed to find an area of weakness,” said Kevin Rollins, president and chief operating officer.
Looking forward, Schneider said the company expects to see a 25 percent jump in unit sales in the second quarter over a year ago and a 15 percent increase in revenue—to more than $9.7 billion.
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