Dell Claiming The Market Leadership

With Dell’s latest move in the gaming business Asetek can now finally rightfully claim the market leadership. There is plenty of marketing literature that explains why market leadership is important so I will not go in detail about that besides stating that it is pretty important in terms of margins as well as future growth opportunities. Dell is the inarguable market leader in the PC gaming space both in terms of revenue as well as unit shipments and since we are now designed in as a 100% attach, Asetek is de facto the market leader in the liquid cooling space both in terms of volume as well as revenue.

If we look for a minute towards Dell’s gaming product strategy it is clear Dell is consolidating its two gaming product lines, the XPS line of gaming products (4, 6 and 7 series) and Alienware line up into a single line under the Dell Alienware Brand. The Alienware product line has been boiled down to two new platforms; the all new Dell Alienware Area 51 and the Dell Alienware Aurora. The Area 51 and Aurora are each available in high performance and the ALX extreme performance addition and all models are liquid cooled by Asetek. There is no longer any product difference between Dell and Alienware, as all gaming products are now Dell products carrying an Alienware brand, or in other words a successful integration of Alienware in to Dell.

It is pretty remarkable that end users now can buy gaming machines with liquid cooling all the way down to $1299, which was unheard of just a few years back. Dell has really proven its ability to innovate and bring high end futures to the masses and raised the bar significantly for any other player trying to enter this market. From now on it will simply be unrealistic to imagine any gaming PC selling in any reasonable volumes without liquid cooling. Kudos to Dell for making this bold move in tough times and raise the bar rather than just cost down! As an example Corsair is selling the H50 liquid cooler in the channel for $79, meaning that in its least expensive configuration Dell actually delivers a $79 value cooler already installed in a $1299 product, awesome if you ask me.

I see some of the OEM’s only have one thing in their head and that is to cost down. Well yes cost is important, but it is also a spiral of death where we will end up with completely uninspiring desktop PC’s with no value what so ever and with no opportunity to make money – for anyone involved… I think that is referred to as lighting your candle in both ends… Personally I am a great believer that it is in tough times you have to beef up development and innovation to capture market share and get out stronger on the other side and unlike a few others I actually do believe in a future for the desktop PC.

Congratulations to Dell for being the market leader and trendsetter in the gaming market!