Michael Dell aims to swoop on Compaq/HP 'confusion'

Michael Dell believes his company can take advantage of the confusion plaguing the Compaq/HP merger.

While the two industry giants struggle with shareholder disapproval and the sheer complexity of such a mammoth tie-up, Dell has quietly increased its share of the PC market during the last quarter - the only company to do so - and has made serious inroads into the server, storage and workstation markets.

Sales in those sectors are up 20 per cent year on year, while Dell's share of the worldwide PC pie now stands at 14.5 per cent. Compaq - the closest company to Dell - has 11 per cent.

In an interview with the FT, Michael Dell, founder and chief executive of his eponymous company, said: "It's just a delightful series of opportunities for us that emerge from this. [HP and Compaq are] going to be doing a lot of things that have nothing to do with adding value to customers, whereas we're going to be doing things for ours."

He is determined not to rest on his laurels, having the rather ambitious aim of taking 40 per cent of the global PC market.

He is also keen to continue to focus on low-end servers and storage equipment.

But there's one area where he will not go head to head with the IBMs and HP/Compaqs of this world: services.

Dell told the FT that replicating IBM's services business would take "an incredible amount of time", claiming that he has "bigger fish to fry".