Dell to expand in India, Europe

The article "Dell to expand in India, Europe" appeared on CNN Money Online on Monday, March 21st, 2006 (http://money,cnn.com/). In the article, Dell Inc., the world's largest personal computer maker, said it would push deeper into low-cost countries by hiring another 1200 staff for a call center in INdia and building a factory in Eastern Europe. On Monday, March 21st, 2006, Dell opened its third Indian call center in the northern state of punjab. Dell also has two other existing call centers in India, mainly to handle customer care, offer technical support and for application development. India's flourishing business process outsourcing(BPO) sector has become a magnet for global corporations such as General Electric and American Express. The sector is expected to clock sales of $5.7 billion in the year to March 31 st, a growth of 44 percent over the last fiscal year. Heavy demand for outsourcing of services has helped this sector grow at a compounded annual rate of 56 percent since 2000. Dell has already invested tens of millions of dollars in India and now employs over 7000 people in India, its largest workforce outside of the United States. Further plans for more investments in the country are in the works, as Asia becomes one of the fastest growing areas for Dell. Dell also announced plans to open a second European computer making plant in Eastern Europe to support growth in Europe. Dell expects to continue growing faster than the industry and its plans for a second plant in Europe will help Dell shore up its business against HP in one of the few big markets where it outpaces Dell in sales.

Samsung is Now What Sony Once Was

The New York Times published Samsung is Now what Sony Once Was in the business Day Section On November 10, 2006. The authors, James Brooke and Saul Hansell, report that Samsung Electronics, A once struggling Korean consumer electronics brand, has now twice the market capitalization of Sony. Sony, since 1997, has been the leading household name brand for consumer electronics in all areas and has now fallen to third or even fourth place in many of the products it even helped to pioneer. Today, Sony is finding itself in fierce competition with not only Samsung but also with brands such as Apple with its new "iPod" as well as Canon and Kodak for digital cameras, another product which Sony helped to pioneer back in 1988. This quick and drastic change in market capitalization and stock prices demonstrates the highly competitive world of consumer electronics. Sony's stock price that used to be able to thrive off of consistent best selling products has dropped nearly 75 percent wince March of 2000. samsung's greatest advantage is its huge capacity to build raw components like memory chips and display apnels. this investment has allowed Samsung to dramatically decrease its production costs in turn allowing them to pass those savings onto their customers.