Dell looks at China as source of innovation

Amit Midha, president of Dell Asia Pacific and Japan Region

Chinadaily.com.cn interviewed Amit Midha (President, Dell Asia Pacific and Japan Region) on Dec 19, 2013, in Xiamen, Fujian province. Midha talked about Dell's strategy.

"Our strategy and our commitment to China as well as customers all remain the same. We can do more under the new construct. In terms of Dell in China, we have about 8,000 team members; we buy more than $20 billion of products here for export (every year)； we are growing in China. At the same time, not only financial success is important, our operations here play a very critical role. Xiamen is now globally one of the best quality producing manufacturing sites, so is Chengdu, where we recently opened a manufacturing location," Midha said.

"In addition, we continue to contribute to local communities – disaster recovery, migrant children education, and pediatric cancer prevention. We're excited to be part of that. Volunteerism is very high and employees remain very committed. We're excited what Dell China is accomplishing together with our team members across the country."

Q: What is Dell's strategy for China?

A: In terms of China, I believe that our strategy will continue to be the same, and our commitment to China remains as strong as ever. China is the No 2 market for us. We are committed to expanding and serving our customers. We're committed to bringing more global products, services and solutions here. But at the same time, China is also playing a different role. Now we're developing products in China and selling it across the world.

In the past, China was only for manufacturing, R&D, and sales operations. Now we're looking at China as a source of innovation. We're doing software development and hardware design here, and we also have services headquartered here in Xiamen, which also plays a big role.

Dell has a vision to make sure we can provide customers with end-to-end solutions based on the scalable architecture. That vision doesn't change, and that vision is our global vision everywhere. We want to make sure we can help customers transform, connect, get data information from their systems, and protect their information, and we remain committed to that vision. So again, the vision is the same, our technology, footprint, or technology components that help enable this vision continues to progress.

Q: Dell's Chengdu operations center has opened. Will that affect the production volume from the Xiamen side?

A: Chengdu operations is a great example of the country's winning (China's winning). The total volume in China is increasing. So I think the piece you look at is not Chengdu or Xiamen, but China gets more volume. Chengdu and Xiamen focus on their specific products and supply chain. So I think both sides will win.

Q: Lenovo focuses on mobile business, so what is Dell's mobile strategy?

A: We believe that tablets are an extension of notebooks. Tablet with a keyboard is like a notebook in many ways. So we're committed to tablets. We have launched some innovative and exciting products recently. Response to those products from the market is great. Another exciting part is that we recently announced MDM (Mobile Device Management), so you can see the mobile device management, security, tablets, PCs, thin client. We continue to move forward, we also have a client cloud technology, which enables anyone using a smartphone to access information in a secure way. That product is available.

Our strategy is going to be very much focused on tablets, PCs, and thin client from a hardware perspective, and focus on mobile device management, security, and client cloud technology from a software perspective. We also recently demonstrated a product to let you access secure datacenter information on a TV by any devices with a USB port, and again, BYOD is a growing trend and a lot of work has to be done on data centers as well as on the client side. From an end user computing point of view, it is connected anywhere anytime in a secure and consistent manner.

Q: Dell China is involved in a voluntary separation program, and there're some rumors about lay-offs. Is that true (particularly in the Chinese market)？

A: We're at a stage where we're making some businesses efficient and investing in some businesses. So when you do this, you would have an optimization process we have to go through, and that is what we're going through. I think the business for us in Asia is growing, and typically when that happens, you would always see a lot more opportunities for our people, and that's what we can talk about -- taking care of the customer, creating opportunities for our people, and optimizing business. Because we can continue to do these three things, the rest is all the details. I don't see a huge impact to China. But again, that is a voluntary program so I don't have a number of how people are reacting to it.

Q: Most consumers still regard Dell as a PC giant, what is your outlook on the Chinese market for PC business?

A: PC market globally last year was about negative 9 percent growth, and this year is expected to be negative 1 to negative 2 percent growth. One of the pieces that is probably not clear in this headline number is that business PC is doing much better, while the consumer PC may have some negative impact. Globally our focus remains quite significantly on business-to-business side, it's more than 80% of our business, so we believe that this is the market we feel good about.

The IT growth rate (the spending total) is about 3-6% in China, and we have tremendous offerings for our customers to help them optimize their IT spending and really transform their businesses from end user computing (which is PC), datacenter (which is server and storage), networking, or from services and software perspective, and if the IT spending growth is 3-6% percent, we feel pretty good about the market.