I was really hoping it wasn’t true, but apparently it is: Alienware is being bought by Dell.
Why don’t I want it t be true? Well, Alienware builds hand-made boutique machines for the serious gamer. Dell builds commodity by the tens of millions for the home consumer. Dell is so much bigger than Alienware ($55 billion in revenue, 33 million computers in 2005, versus $200 million in revenue and 60,000 computers for Alienware) that it seems fated that Alienware will “disappear”.
But will they? The current CEO and one of the founders of Alienware reminds us that they will be a “wholly owned subsidiary”, which gives them some lattitude to remain “different” from Dell. I hope he’s right. But all that keeps running through my head is a line from Star Trek’s Borg…
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
The guys that just got rich by selling their companies always say that… it’s just for combined efficiencies they say, they really beleive in outr product they say, now we can focus more enrgy on doing the things you love they say.
Truth is that no one spends millions to buy a company unless they plan on doing something with it. After all they have to at the least make back the millions they spent to buy the company. And no one who is dedicated to an independent path sells a profitable company to someone else.
I have nothing against people cashing in. I’d probably do the same given the chance ( and I wish I had that chance, sadly I don’t have anything anyone wants to spend millions for for 😉 ) But it would be nice if people would at least be honest and say “Hey, they made us an offer that will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams so we took it. Don’t give a damn what happens to the company now cause I’m buying a tropical island and taking up a new career as macrame bikini maker. See ya”
Yeah: you have it right for most of the guys at least. The CEO of Alienware does say one thing I can understand: they haven’t been able to build up the distribution network nor do they have the spare cash they need to do the “extra special” design work. Dell has deep pockets, so that’s no longer a problem. And I guess if he was just cashing in, he’d be outta there- instead, it looks like he’s staying on.
But…I kind of like the idea of a small company hand-crafting computers. Now I get the image of Dells rolling off an assembly line, getting an Alienware sticker slapped on the side, and being sold for $1000 more than usual to those “stupid” gamers. I guess we’ll see.
That’s kind of the problem though isn’t it? Dell is unlikely just to hand over a big chunkof cash…if they were they would have just made a loan. So what’s going to happen with that design work? Well it will go to the coporate design shop, where they will say “Cool! We love it! But we haven’t got those parts and we can’t keep such a small stock of non standard stuff in inventory. What if you used this instead, it’s out of our parts bin and it’s pretty close …” By the time it’s done the shelby tag ends up on a ford tempo 😉
As to the distribution issues… I’m sure Amazon could help them out there and not have to own the company.
I’m sure not all of these aquisitions are made with “evil intent”, but the reasons given might serve as rationalizations, by they are seldom ever convincing. There are just so many otherways that those supposed objectives could be achieved without outright purchase/sale of a company.
Mind you, I thought “real” gamers all scratch built their own machines, so they have nothing to worry about! LOL 😉