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No Comment: Dell exec dismisses iPad, can't count
Dell's global head of marketing Andy Lark spoke to CIO Australia this week, and he not only dissed Apple -- a company with a current market cap of $323.3 billion compared to Dell's measly $28.2 billion -- but also found some time to dream up some completely bogus specifications and pricing for the iPad. Lark started by stating that "Apple is great if you've got a lot of money and live on an island. It's not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex." Ahem. That deserves a spot on our No Comment wall of confusion. Next, Lark stated that enterprises were not going to be jumping on iPad deployments, since "an iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case [means] you'll be at $1500 or $1600; that's double of what you're paying." Joshua Schnell at Macgasm pointed out that a 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad 2, Apple Wireless Keyboard, iPad Dock and iPad 2 Smart Cover price out at US$666 before taxes. Where the extra $900 - $1000 comes into play is a mystery, unless Dell is selling thousand-dollar mice. Moreover, apparently Lark has no idea that the iPad doesn't need a mouse. It uses a magical and revolutionary "touchscreen" for its user interface. In the annals of Dell executive history, this has to go down as a pretty impressive foot-in-mouth comment; it rivals Michael Dell's famous quote about Apple on October 6, 1997: "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." Looks like it's time for Andy to go back to school and learn a little bit about his competitors. It might also help to brush up on those math skills.
