Dell Computer, the world's largest mail-order seller of personal computers, has formed a new division in the United States as part of an ambitious plan to expand beyond its corporate sales base.
The consumer-oriented unit will be run by David Hood, who joined Dell two weeks ago from AT&T, where he was general manager of the company's Worldnet Internet access service.
Mr Hood's new organisation, called Dell Direct, will receive a marketing budget three times larger than Dell's previous consumer sales budget, said Paul Bell, who is head of Dell's small-business and consumer unit and Mr Hood's superior.
He declined to specify the precise size of the budget, which will be spent largely on television, newspaper and magazine advertising, but he said it would be 'tens of millions of dollars'.
Dell Asia is ahead of the US. Its Dell Direct division - which sells PCs by phone, mail, and increasingly, the Internet - already had doubled its marketing budget starting in April, according to Phil Kelly, Asia-Pacific president.
Consumer sales through Dell Direct accounted for about 19 per cent of Dell's Asian sales, Mr Kelly said, adding that he was highly optimistic about the Internet.
'Is there any reason the Net could not account for 40 to 50 per cent of our transactions? No.' Dell sells PCs worth US$2 million daily through the Internet. Its overall consumer sales last year were $1 billion, or 10 per cent of total revenue.
