By Graham K. Rogers

As a long-time Apple follower, I have a special interest in Dell. After all, not long after Steve Jobs' return to Cupertino, it was Michael Dell, at the time riding the crest of the PC wave, who was reported to have said that Apple should shut down the company and sell the stock back to shareholders. Now the boot is on the other foot.

Although Dell himself later claimed this was misconstrued (he couldn't imagine himself being CEO of any other company) according to a report by Alexia Tsotsis on TechCrunch, it did remain one of the most used quotes, especially after Apple was turned around.

Michael Dell is not the only one to misjudge Apple as both CEO and former CEO of Microsoft have said things that might have been better left unsaid. Steve Ballmer famously said, "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share" in a 2007 interview reported by David Lieberman on USA Today (you have to scroll way down the page to find this). [The image used here is by Courtesy of Dell Inc.]

Bill Gates (cited in many sources, including by Charles Arthur in the Guardian) expects a move to the Surface as tablet users "can't type, they can't create documents, they don't have Office there". Not that many have actually woken up to the Gates-fact that they are limited.

Indeed, the tablet as realised by Apple, and latterly with copycat Android devices, is showing the limitations of the desktop computer. Many happy users get on with their day to day tasks, never realising what they are missing. For many, tablet computers as they exist now, even minus that keyboard Gates thinks is so necessary, are just right for what they want to do.

The iPad - and it is the iPad, despite the others taking some of the market - is one of the most widely-used computing devices today. With its arrival and worldwide financial belt-tightening, the tablet has taken over where the PC used to reign supreme. Sales of desktop PCs have fallen, sales of notebook computers are also reduced, though not by quite so much, while the iPad and the iPad mini are selling well. Samsung of all other manufacturers have shipped several million devices, but the numbers are far less than reported sales of iPads.

In the wake of these falling sales, companies like Dell are not the gems they once were. Nor are major companies like HP that have sought to reinvent themselves by straying ever further away from their core strengths.

Michael Dell has been trying to buy back the company and take it private (ashes in the mouth there) and has examined a number of options to do this. As he has made these attempts, so interest has grown (and waned) with some investment groups walking away.

One investor who has appeared, and not like a knight in shining armour, is Carl Icahn, a man whose knowledge of the IT industry may be limited, but who has some clear aims according to Brooke Crothers. These include the acquisition of Dell, the removal of Michael Dell as CEO (fair enough) and the later merger with (perhaps) HP. Further information on the buyout possibilities are available in an item by Catherine Shu on TechCrunch.

All the while he acknowledges that the PC business is contracting but that it is "extremely attractive for the short-term because it's necessary", noting that "Microsoft depends on Dells and Hewlett-Packards". At least it does for now.

Icahn is a stripper. To be more precise, an asset stripper. Unlike investors of the calibre of Warren Buffett, who look at the long term potential of a company and put their money in as a buttress, reaping the dividends for many years, Carl Icahn is a short-term act: one of the unacceptable faces of capitalism.

Perhaps his most famous involvement was with the troubled airline, TWA that he bought in 1985. One of his most damaging acts was the sale of the airline's London routes to American Airlines for $445 million (Elaine X. Grant, St Louis Magazine). He was in it for Carl Icahn's profits, not the profits of TWA.

In the meantime, among his ventures, it is reported he was an investor in Yahoo! connected to the ouster of directors there who had rejected Microsoft's takeover bid; and he has a 10% stake in Netflix among a host of other investments. One of the features of his involvements appears to be the removal of directors unfavourable to him and installing his own proxies (Wikipedia).

That Icahn is aware that the PC has a limited shelf-life these days is clear from a number of sources. Where the value in some companies lies is in the software business they have built, and this may be particularly true of HP as the former CEO, Leo Apotheker, began moves to turn HP into a services company to the detriment of its various hardware businesses.

With his previous connections to Yahoo! and currently to Netflix, Icahn is aware of the value of software as opposed to hardware. It is not beyond the imagination to speculate that his intentions for both Dell and HP would not see them surviving in their current forms for long. The former workforce of TWA might have some suggestions for the two companies.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.