This year marks the 45th anniversary of what many view as the first “personal computer” and over the decades, it’s become an integral part of our personal and professional lives…it’s how we get work done, how we share and how we stay connected. Dell has been committed to the PC business since day one and our global customers recognize it – as reported by IDC, we recently celebrated year-over-year worldwide PC share growth for more than 24 consecutive quarters.
The mighty PC has empowered and connected people and communities, providing a portal to education and work. PCs make it possible to set up and scale businesses, create new experiences in entertainment, inspire new innovation for a safer, smarter world, and deliver major breakthroughs in science and healthcare.
The PC is still evolving and how we use these devices in the future will change. We believe that the PCs of the future will support new ways to collaborate – delivering more immersive experiences and becoming even more intelligent, providing personalized experiences that adapt to our needs in the moment.
So as personal devices become increasingly collaborative, immersive and intelligent, how do we design for the future? At Dell, we believe in an agile approach to innovation that leverages the brightest and most creative minds across our strategy, technology, business, research and design teams. Innovation, agility, creativity and velocity are core to the Experience Innovation Group I lead within Dell. The next generation of PCs requires experience-led innovation and we have built an entirely new, rapid prototyping process to iteratively develop concepts beyond the next generation of products. These multi-disciplinary teams are collaborating to envision and build the products and solutions that will fuel human progress.
Innovation is born from new ideas that iterate in fast sprints. This is the fun stuff – no holds barred technology design and development that is focused on the devices and applications of the future. We’re talking about devices and solutions for the next 5-10 years ahead. We have our failures, of course – but we fail fast, learn what we can, and build stronger concepts and products designed to change the game.
We believe in trying new ideas early and digging deeper quickly. At any given time in our various labs, we may have multiple new concept devices and solutions in progress.
Dual screens and foldables have been in Dell’s design and innovation pipeline for the last few years, however, as with all concepts, the same thing always grounds – and excites – us; we want to deliver high-quality products that deliver the best, most complete experiences for our customers. That means spending time with customers, seeing how they work, forecasting future industry trends and asking tough questions along the way – will it make customers more productive? Is it intuitive and enjoyable to use? Does it serve a purpose now or could it help prevent future problems our customers may have?
The PC experience goes far beyond form factors… it’s also about the innovation and technology on the inside that can be incredibly transformative. For example, our teams brought to fruition Dell ExpressSign-in to speed up the log in process, Dell’s ProSupport Suite using machine learning to predict system issues and engage proactive customer service, and the Dell Precision Optimizer Premium which uses AI to learn about the way you use applications on your workstation to optimize your system’s performance.
Innovation is in the DNA of Dell Technologies, but Michael Dell wasn’t innovating for innovation’s sake – his vision 35 years ago was to help customers access powerful technology tailored to their needs. Since then, Dell Technologies has grown to serve customers across 180 countries, but our core values and mission remain the same – the customer experience is what matters. It’s an exciting time to be at Dell and we’re looking forward to sharing more of our design and engineering journey with you.
