The rumors about Dell to close its manufacturing facility in Bukit Minyak, Penang has been around for months. The facility will eventually be sold to a contract manufacturer from Taiwan which will then will be doing its outsourcing work (manufacture the notebook and desktops) for Dell.
It appears that the rumors is untrue. Steve Felice, Dell Asia Pacific President on recent press conference related to Dell Q4 performance denied such rumors and at the same time said Dell will continue its present operation in Penang. Dell has 3 facilities in Malaysia, 2 in Penang and 1 in Cyberjaya. Altogether, total of Dell employees is about 5000 in Malaysia.
This news come as a relief for Dell employees especially during hard times like now. However with Dell having one of its worst perfomance ever, other cost cutting measures are still possible to affect them, which includes salary cut.
After making inroad in Singapore and Malaysia’s retail channel , Dell recently continue it’s retail expansion in Indonesia via PT Metrodata. From their press release, Metrodata known to has long relation with Dell since 2002 when they become Dell’s Authorize Service Provider and commercial product partner
Metrodata, a public listed company on Indonesia’s stock exchange, is one of the leading information technology company in Indonesia. It has worked and ally with multinational companies such as Oracle, IBM and Dell and has strong reputation in Indonesia.
Through METRODATA’s retail network and partners in the 5 major cities of Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, and Medan, Dell will begin offering XPS M1330 and the Inspiron 1420 laptops; and the Inspiron 530 and 530s (slim-build) desktops.
Indonesia with 200 millions residents is definitely a very huge market for Dell. But with it’s unique geographical condition, where the country is separated by thousands of islands, selling direct through online store is insufficient to cater the needs of mass citizen.
Since making an announcement to expand it’s retail presence in Asia last year, Dell has aggressively building up and finding retail partner in a new but high growth market such Indonesia . Where’s next? Philippines and Thailand are another major market in South East Asean, where Dell has no presence in retail. Dell could expand in this countries very soon. Stay tune for more news and update
Admin
24 February 2008
Dell
Finally, I manage to get the Dell so called Direct Store’s pictures from my friend. On my post earlier, I have mentioned about the opening of Dell’s Direct Store in Mid Valley Megamall shopping complex.
I’m not sure if this is part of Dell’s channel strategy, since the store itself bear the Dell logo as well as Intel. It could be the collaboration between Dell and Intel to showcase their product to the public. I doubt there are AMD’s powered notebooks/desktops displayed there.
Judging on the size of the store, it seems that the store is not that huge and does not showcasing full array of Dell’s product. I’m actually expecting something similar (or almost) to Mac Store nearby
If Dell is looking somewhere to build similar store, I believe Low Yat Plaza located at Kuala Lumpur’s so called Golden Triangle is the best. It is the largest IT center in Malaysia. I do visit there quite often, and I can see that there are large crowd looking for computer related items.
Good luck Dell!!
Admin
14 December 2007
Dell
From Dell’s latest advertisement in The Sun today, I stumbled upon the newly opened Dell’s store called Dell Direct Store at Mid Valle Mega Mall, one of the busiest shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur (KL).
At this point, it is unknown if this store is selling Dell’s computer directly to the public or just showcasing Dell’s product for testing and display. I’m trying googling around looking for more details about this info(including picture if any), with no luck.
Since Michael Dell making a u-turn and become the CEO of former world’s number 1 computer maker few months back (HP currently holds the crown), Michael Dell has changed the company direction from purely selling the computer direct to the customer, to be the company that has its own channels or known more as 3rd party vendor here.
In case you’re interested to view the store, please do so using address below. And don’t forget to shoot a picture or 2, and pass it to me to be included in this blog 
. I’m gonna drop by there soon, maybe when Christmas sale has started
Dell Direct Store
2nd Floor, IT World, Lot 15
Mid Valley Mega Mall
Kuala Lumpur
Admin
10 December 2007
Dell
