PC boom helps Dell record encouraging sales

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Dell Technologies has reported an increase in quarterly revenue, driven by a surge in demand for business computers for remote workers and students.

The company took in a total of $26.11 billion in Q4, up 9% year-on-year, and recorded a profit of $1.34 billion ($1.57 a share). Non-GAAP earnings stood at $2.70 a share.

Dell also reported an overall profit of $3.5 billion ($4.22 a share) for fiscal 2021, on revenue of $94.22 billion, which represents an increase of 2% compared to the previous year.

The firm generated record-high revenue from both its commercial and consumer offerings, with 50.3 million PCs shipped in 2020. The company’s PC unit delivered Q4 revenue of $13.8 billion, up 17% on Q4 2019, and took in $48.4 billion across the entire year, with an operating income of $3.4 billion.

The infrastructure unit delivered somewhat mixed results. While the segment earned 2% less revenue on storage, its revenue for servers and networking rose by 3%. For the quarter, its operating income was $1.2 billion, and its revenue relatively flat at $8.8 billion.

For the entire year, the infrastructure division took in revenue of $32.6 billion.

Global PC market

Dell's performance in 2020 isn’t surprising, since continued consumer demand resulted in the highest global PC market growth in a decade.

According to a study from Gartner, 79.4 million PCs were shipped worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2020, which represents a 10.7% increase on Q4 2019. In the 2020 calendar year, 275 million units were sold - an increase of 4.8% on the previous year.

Gartner also reveals that the top three vendors in the worldwide PC market remain the same as in previous quarters, with Lenovo holding a significant lead over HP and Dell.

There is a high probability that growth opportunities brought about by Covid-19 will continue to have an impact through at least the first half of 2021.

Via ZDNet

Mirza Bahic is a freelance tech journalist and blogger from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the past four years, Mirza has been ghostwriting for a number of tech start-ups from various industries, including cloud, retail and B2B technology.