The 'big men' raced to reform

The fierce market has forced Intel, Dell and Gateway - three big men are struggling - to hustle reform.

The plan is different, but all have the same goal: To bring the company back to the optimal framework to keep up with the two top seasons of the year: the school season and Christmas 2006.

Intel

First, Intel. Last week, the world's No. 1 chip giant has just announced it will resign 1000 of its mid-range managers. The layoffs are spread all over the world and account for about 1% of the company's current workforce.

According to expert Rob Enderle, this step is part of a strategic reform plan announced by chief executive Paul Otellini in April. This is considered a necessary response to constant criticism from the top. For Intel is making a loss and losing market share to rival AMD.

The stock market believes that Intel will continue to sack until the figure cuts to 10,000.

And Dell

Meanwhile, before the laptop scandal exploded, Dell's No. 1 personal computer maker decided to limit the discount for online orders. Instead, they will lower the ceiling price of all products.

This can be considered a huge change in Dell. So far, Dell has always relied on discount models to advertise extremely low prices, extremely attractive to dealers and customers. But the general psychology of consumers is not like the complex.

Lowering the floor price will help bring buyers closer to Dell, amid sluggish market share. In the past few months, Dell is also implementing a comprehensive reform, which focuses on customer service. Dell intends to spend up to $ 100 million to recruit more operators, technical support and improve after-sales service quality.

In addition, the mechanism of discounting online orders also exists vulnerabilities. Often the money only flows into the retailer's pocket, while the user or unknown to this benefit, or . lazy.

However, Dell's customer service has just encountered a new scandal. The blog of this service accidentally coincides with the domain name with a heavy porn . website. And so, instead of interacting with Dell's help department, users hit . sex.

Then Gateway

Gateway, the No. 3 personal computer company in the United States, is also shivering. The company said it would recruit 130 more technical support staff, mainly to answer customer inquiries.

Since the collapse of the dot-com fever in 2001, Gateway has outsourced most of the hotline work to India to save costs. But since the beginning of the year, Gateway has relocated all of this to North America. Now they decided to set up their own help center.

This is one of the last steps of the important reform campaign Gateway has taken over the past few years. Gateway merged with rival eMachines in 2004, laying off thousands of employees and reforming its entire management team. Now the company just needs to find an official executive (Rick Snyder is just the interim director) and execute the promises.

According to IDC analyst Richard Shim, plans for Intel, Dell and Gateway are all on the right track, but there is no guarantee that they will succeed in such a tough market. Global computer sales will grow 11% in 2006, down from more than 15% two years ago.

Thien Y