Dell closes down hardware design unit in India

Dell closes down hardware design unit in India

Dell's hardware in Bangalore is being shifted to software development;
company is looking to contract manufacturers for hardware design.

John Ribeiro
PC World
Thursday, December 6, 2007; 9:19 AM

Dell Inc. will phase out its hardware design unit in Bangalore as it
relies more on contract manufacturers capable of doing design to get its
products to market.

Dell told employees at a meeting on Tuesday that the center will now
focus on software development, and hardware design will be shifted from
Bangalore to design centers in Austin and Taiwan, according to informed
sources. Dell had hinted of this move some months ago, and had linked it
to Dell's strategy to use more contract manufacturer, or ODM (Original
Design Manufacturer), resources to design its products, the sources said.

Set up in 2004, the hardware design operation was relatively new in
India in comparison to the software development work being done in India
by Dell.

A Dell India spokeswoman said on Thursday that the decision to move
hardware design out of India reflected a decision by the company to
focus on software development, testing, and documentation in India.
"This is in line with our higher focus on solutions, which requires a
lot of software development," she said.

The company had over 500 staff doing software development and hardware
design in India, and of these less than 100 will be affected by the
phasing out of hardware design in the country, the spokeswoman added.
The hardware design unit had designed a dual-socket server and a storage
product, she said.

The Times of India newspaper reported that estimates of the number of
people losing their jobs as a result of the shift vary from a few dozen
to about 170 people.

Besides software development and hardware design, Dell also has customer
support centers in India, that service its customers worldwide. The
company announced last year that it plans to double the number of staff
it employs in India to 20,000 in three years.

© 2007 PC World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:19:57 -0500, Tony Harding <>
wrote:

>Dell closes down hardware design unit in India

I have a feeling that India is going to suffer as China grows. Poverty
seems endemic in India without much apparent desire to raise the
overall wellness of its citizenship. I think the average Chinese
citizen, by contrast, will participate a lot more in China's economic
success.

The Indian caste system is truly sickening.