Newsademic British English edition 260

parts made by several other compa­
nies. Dell computers use Microsoft 
software and chips made by the 
Intel Company. Dell had another 
advantage. Its PCs could be as­
sembled to order. When ordering a 
PC, a customer could say what they 
wanted. This could be the amount of 
memory, computing speed or screen 
size. Dell soon became very suc­
cessful. In 1996 it started selling its 
PCs and laptops via the internet. It 
also began to sell servers. By 2001, 
Dell had become the largest com­
puter maker in the world.
The D ell C om pany’s headquarters in Texas
However, the computer mar­
ket has changed. Asian companies 
such as Lenovo, from China, and 
Acer, from Taiwan, now make less 
expensive PCs. Smartphones and 
tablets have become more popular. 
The Apple Company has been very 
successful with its phones, comput­
ers and Apple stores. Therefore, in 
recent years, the number of PCs that 
Dell sells has been declining.
EMC is a data storage company. 
It also offers ‘cloud computing’ 
services. Its main customers are 
companies, both big and medium 
size. EMC was set up 36 years ago. 
Now, it is the world’s biggest data 
storage company. This market, or 
area, is expanding rapidly. More 
and more data is being stored. This 
can be company information, pho­
tographs, music, and films. Last 
year EMC made a profit of US$2.7 
billion (£1.75 billion). The compa­
ny’s total sales were US$25.5 bil­
lion (£16.5 billion). EMC has over
70,000 workers.
Dell will need to borrow much 
of the money that it will pay EMC 
shareholders. M r Dell says that 
his company will repay these bor­
rowings as quickly as possible. He 
believes combining EM C’s data 
storage with D ell’s PCs and serv­
ers will create a very successful IT 
(Information Technology) company. 
D ell’s headquarters is in the state of 
Texas. EMC is based in Massachu­
setts. M r Dell says that he has no 
plans to close EM C ’s headquarters.
Some business experts were 
surprised 
by 
D ell’s 
announce­
ment. They suspect that Dell is 
worried about its falling PC sales. 
The company therefore wants to 
become more involved in a grow­
ing, or expanding, market such as 
cloud computing. □
C