Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. I do
Speaker 1: want to just rehashuh and reiterate what Charlie just mentioned.
Speaker 1: Maderna's vaccine benefits outwing it's risks. This is from that
Speaker 1: FDA advisory panel. We know that they were reviewing and
Speaker 1: voting today, the panel voting twenty zero one extension to
Speaker 1: back the Maderna's shot, and the panel voting at that
Speaker 1: meeting on the Maderna vaccine data. Remember, this is about
Speaker 1: emergency use authorization. So we will look for that final
Speaker 1: headline about that, but it was largely expected some of
Speaker 1: these headlines that we're seeing, all right, We're talking about
Speaker 1: a lot uh, and we're also kind of watching some
Speaker 1: of the big trends that we have seen in our world,
Speaker 1: and when it comes to the tech world, we have
Speaker 1: seen worldwide PC shipments totaling about seventy one point four
Speaker 1: million in the third quarter of that's about a three
Speaker 1: point six percent increase from the third quarter of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Some data coming from Gardner. You know, for a long
Speaker 1: time we talked about the end of the PC it
Speaker 1: hasn't happened that way, and working from home has been
Speaker 1: a boon for those PC workers and PC makers. So
Speaker 1: let's get into that with Sandbird, president of the Client
Speaker 1: Solutions Group at Dell Technologies. He's got a front row
Speaker 1: seat to this industry, responsible for the success of Dell's
Speaker 1: commercial and consumer client portfolio, which includes notebooks, desktops, workstations, tablets,
Speaker 1: tablets and software, and a lot more. He joins us
Speaker 1: on the phone from Austin, Texas. Sam, it is nice
Speaker 1: to have you here with us. How are you and
Speaker 1: your team? Uh doing well? Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: having me. Carol. Well, we'll talk to us a little
Speaker 1: bit about your world, because I know you guys I
Speaker 1: think at the end of November actually came out um
Speaker 1: with earnings. I mean, you guys are seeing some strong
Speaker 1: demand for PCs. Tell us a little bit about that
Speaker 1: and if that strong demand has continued. Yeah, we've seen
Speaker 1: you mentioned some of the results in in Q three.
Speaker 1: If you look at the industry on whole um and
Speaker 1: using the way I d C looks at it, we're
Speaker 1: on track to ship about three million PCs in an
Speaker 1: industry in which will be the biggest the industry has
Speaker 1: been in six years. Expectations are that it grows again
Speaker 1: next year, and uh, if you look at it. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked ten years ago some people were talking about
Speaker 1: the death of the PC and that was definitely overhyped.
Speaker 1: It's it's not true. And you know, the PC has
Speaker 1: been really important as people have been working, learning from
Speaker 1: home and dealing with the pandemic. Well, what do you
Speaker 1: think happened? I agree with you, like I think for
Speaker 1: a while there, that's what we talked about, that the
Speaker 1: death of the PC, and it hasn't been that way.
Speaker 1: What's happened over the last decade and increasingly, as you said,
Speaker 1: it's being exacerbated. I think some of those trends as
Speaker 1: a result of working from home. Yeah, the thing we've
Speaker 1: seen is is technology is really important to people being
Speaker 1: able to get done what they want to get done,
Speaker 1: whether that's being a student, Uh, you know, working in
Speaker 1: a business looking to go change change the world, reinvent
Speaker 1: an approach, or someone just trying to relax and uh,
Speaker 1: maybe enjoy some downtime by connecting with friends or playing games.
Speaker 1: And you know, we believe for ten years and from
Speaker 1: the beginning of our company when we were uh founded
Speaker 1: that technology and technology in the hands of people is
Speaker 1: a really good thing. It's a positive force for good
Speaker 1: in the world. It helps people be more more productive,
Speaker 1: more successful in their lives. And I think we've really
Speaker 1: seen that come alive in the last decade. And you know,
Speaker 1: during these trying times over the course of this year, well, Sam,
Speaker 1: you know what also happened. I feel like we went
Speaker 1: through a period where everybody was like downsizing their like
Speaker 1: technology equipment, you know, phones got smaller, like that was
Speaker 1: kind of the trend, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we realized, you know what, I actually like to sit
Speaker 1: at a laptop and have some space to work on things.
Speaker 1: I don't want to read everything on a tablet or
Speaker 1: on my phone. And I do wonder what happened in
Speaker 1: terms of our thinking, whether it's personally or you know,
Speaker 1: in offices, what happened. Do you think that that train,
Speaker 1: that trend kind of shifted. Yeah, you know, Carol, we've
Speaker 1: we've seen that there is not one device and one
Speaker 1: approach to end all so times when a small screen
Speaker 1: is great, but exactly what you said, a larger screen
Speaker 1: lets me see more information and that's a that's a
Speaker 1: big deal whether I'm I'm doing things on social posts
Speaker 1: or productivity things for work. Being able to see more
Speaker 1: equals I can process more, I can get more more things,
Speaker 1: more things done. So you think about that kind of
Speaker 1: form factor. You know, we've seen the same thing of
Speaker 1: the trend has been PCs that are powerful enough to
Speaker 1: do video conferencing, other kind of demands that we threw
Speaker 1: on them, but then people also putting like displays and
Speaker 1: peripherals around them of like I'm sitting here with a
Speaker 1: forty in super wide monitor where you can look at
Speaker 1: two sets of information side by side. It all equals,
Speaker 1: you know, allow people to make better decisions, get things
Speaker 1: figured out faster, have more time to themselves. So we've
Speaker 1: seen the value of the bigger screen. We've seen the
Speaker 1: value of a keyboard for input. People want choice and
Speaker 1: there's a re and those have done well because they're
Speaker 1: pretty convenient and easy ways to interact with technology. So
Speaker 1: what are you seeing in terms of capital expenditures, you know,
Speaker 1: plan strategies by some of your clients, And I'm curious
Speaker 1: about some of the conversations that you're having that as
Speaker 1: a result of the pandemic, maybe how have things change
Speaker 1: in terms of their expectations for their buying patterns going
Speaker 1: into well, we've seen a big increase in the interest
Speaker 1: in technology. We've seen that in different sectors, so you
Speaker 1: think about education, government, consumer sectors have been strong as people,
Speaker 1: UM look at the technology they have and think about
Speaker 1: the requirements and upgrade that technology, and you know, we
Speaker 1: look into the future and we see we see that
Speaker 1: continuing to be important. We see a world where work
Speaker 1: will be done in a hybrid fashion. We're not all
Speaker 1: going back to the office, We're not all going to
Speaker 1: be in our homes forever. But the flexibility people got
Speaker 1: today they will continue to want in the future. Will
Speaker 1: want technology to be a big part of that. And
Speaker 1: companies putting the best technology in people's hands equals people
Speaker 1: can go go do more, be more successful in their jobs.
Speaker 1: We looked at gen Z millennial people coming into the workforce,
Speaker 1: for over of them are influence in the job decision
Speaker 1: that they make by the technology they have because they
Speaker 1: want to make a difference. They know getting something and
Speaker 1: good in their hands helps them do that. UM. One
Speaker 1: thing I want to ask you, Sam is how has
Speaker 1: the pandemic and what you guys have experienced at Dell,
Speaker 1: how is it maybe impacted you're thinking about longer term
Speaker 1: strategies when it comes to technology trends and maybe even
Speaker 1: how you lead your team. You know, we've we've worked
Speaker 1: very differently, Carol, So I mean we went from about
Speaker 1: of our our company working remote literally overnight we had
Speaker 1: of our company working remote. So we saw the you know,
Speaker 1: the challenge is and going and doing that that it's
Speaker 1: getting the right technology in um the hands of your
Speaker 1: employees and team members. You know, the process you use
Speaker 1: for how you interact the culture and how you do
Speaker 1: things online. But all that's served us pretty well because
Speaker 1: we think about the future world and we see giving
Speaker 1: our team members the flexibility to work how they want.
Speaker 1: And many of the businesses I talked about are are
Speaker 1: working through these same things. But you get your team
Speaker 1: members the ability to work in the way that they want,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to attract a broader set of talent.
Speaker 1: You'll be able to engage them in a way that
Speaker 1: allows them to balance, uh, you know, the time they're
Speaker 1: putting into the business and their their personal life. And
Speaker 1: we think that's a really good change. But it's like
Speaker 1: technology isn't a an enabler in that, whether it's a
Speaker 1: you know, PC device at the edge and the parts
Speaker 1: around that, or the infrastructure that you put in place
Speaker 1: in your business. The companies that are going to thrive
Speaker 1: and and succeed are investing in that so they can
Speaker 1: get the best people working in the way that they want. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do feel like the relationships between companies and employees
Speaker 1: and the role of technology and all of this, it
Speaker 1: went from maybe guiding kind of our world to actually
Speaker 1: being a true tool and almost kind of on par
Speaker 1: with I don't want to say on par with people,
Speaker 1: but we really figured out a way to use it,
Speaker 1: uh in a way where we were the masters in
Speaker 1: terms of getting things done. Yeah, well, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: I think we realized, hey, technology is really a friend
Speaker 1: and helps us out a lot. It became more apparent
Speaker 1: if you didn't have great technology, it was hard to
Speaker 1: be connected with some of the things going on. And
Speaker 1: then as we look at the future, like we're building
Speaker 1: those capabilities into our systems. I'm excited about the investments
Speaker 1: were able to make in technology. You think some of
Speaker 1: the things you mentioned, like how do you build intelligence
Speaker 1: into the system so it, you know, it learns you.
Speaker 1: It is a friend that knows you. It does the
Speaker 1: things that you want without you having to mess around
Speaker 1: around on that, whether it's tuning the system, you know,
Speaker 1: self healing it. So just as it's a it's a
Speaker 1: helper in your life. That's that's our aim and why
Speaker 1: we're bullish around the role technology will play in the
Speaker 1: world today and in the future. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1: So what do you think, I don't know, when you
Speaker 1: think kind of pie in the sky ideas in terms
Speaker 1: of where technology goes, you know, next next? I mean
Speaker 1: I think about was it twenty years ago, thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: like this whole idea of voice recognition, like it was
Speaker 1: just it took a long long time for that to
Speaker 1: actually work as well as it does now, right, and
Speaker 1: we take it for granted. I talked to you know,
Speaker 1: my home products and asked me, you know, ask for
Speaker 1: this and that, and you name it, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's Google, whether it's Amazon. You know, you guys are
Speaker 1: all working on this stuff as well. Where do you
Speaker 1: think it all goes and what's maybe the next big
Speaker 1: I don't know, is there a hump that we kind
Speaker 1: of get over when it comes to technology, Well, I.
Speaker 1: You know, I think we're seeing UM different devices and
Speaker 1: foreign factors all play a big role. We talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about intelligence being built into systems, and we're
Speaker 1: seeing that happen in a big way. You hit on
Speaker 1: the way people want to interact with systems, of really
Speaker 1: making that natural. So there are times when a keyboard
Speaker 1: is great, there are times when talking is easy, there
Speaker 1: are times when touch is easy, and really building that
Speaker 1: intuitive interface in UM, getting devices so they're connected all
Speaker 1: the time. You know, we've seen who would have thought
Speaker 1: about connectivity, but you sit and suddenly home networks were overburdened.
Speaker 1: You can think about the importance of screens and where
Speaker 1: those will show up in an office environment and a
Speaker 1: house and like the uh, you know, you can go
Speaker 1: back to future visions of how do I get that
Speaker 1: that data in front of me so that I'm able
Speaker 1: to interact with it? And then and you know, another
Speaker 1: thing we're thinking about, Carol, is just how we also
Speaker 1: do that in a really sustainable way and building out
Speaker 1: a circular economy, so you know, your old technology is
Speaker 1: essentially going into your new technology, and how we're recycling
Speaker 1: those components so at the same time we push cutting edge.
Speaker 1: We want to be responsible in what we're doing. I
Speaker 1: love I love you said that. We were talking earlier
Speaker 1: about the Patagonia CEO. One of our correspondents caught up
Speaker 1: with him, and you know that's what they are all about.
Speaker 1: But there is something that seems like it also happened
Speaker 1: this year where we've all been thinking about sustainability, sustainability
Speaker 1: or regenerative or circularity. But I do feel like it
Speaker 1: took a big step forward. Is that is that fair
Speaker 1: to say, Sam, We've just got about forty seconds left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we we've had it as something important to
Speaker 1: us for quite a while, but certainly look at it.
Speaker 1: We're looking at it more and going how do we
Speaker 1: push that forward? Carol. You know we've done that with plastics,
Speaker 1: precious metals, with magnets in our systems, and there's opportunity
Speaker 1: to do more. So I think it's it's brought that
Speaker 1: into clarity, certainly for us and for many people in
Speaker 1: the world. All Right, Sam, thank you so much. Have
Speaker 1: a healthy and happy or as happy as can be
Speaker 1: in this environment, but certainly a safe holiday season, Sam,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Sambird is president of the Client
Speaker 1: Solutions Group over at Dell Technologies, and he was joining
Speaker 1: us on the phone from Austin, Texas.