name	Dell, Inc.
logo
type	Public company
traded as	NASDAQ-100 ComponentS&P; 500 Component
foundation	Austin, TexasNovember 4, 1984
founder	Michael Dell
location	1 Dell WayRound Rock, Texas, US
area served	Worldwide
key people	Michael Dell(Chairman & CEO)|Elliot Kahn, CFO
products	DesktopsServersNotebooksNetbooksPeripheralsPrinters Televisions
revenue	US$ 61.49 billion (FY 2011)}}

| operating_income = US$ 3.43 billion (FY 2011) | net_income = US$ 2.63 billion (FY 2011) | assets = US$ 38.59 billion (FY 2011) | equity = US$ 5.64 billion (FY 2011) | num_employees = 103,300 (January 2011) | industry = Computer SystemsComputer PeripheralsComputer SoftwareIT consultingIT services | subsid = Dell Services Alienware Force10 | homepage = Dell.com }} Dell, Inc. (, ) is an American multinational information technology corporation based in Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 103,300 people worldwide. Dell is listed at number 41 in the ''Fortune 500'' list.

Dell has grown by both increasing its customer base and through acquisitions since its inception—notable mergers and acquisitions including Alienware (2006) and Perot Systems (2009). As of 2009, the company sold personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, and computer peripherals. Dell also sells HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players and other electronics built by other manufacturers. The company is well known for its innovations in supply chain management and electronic commerce.

Fortune Magazine listed Dell as the sixth largest company in Texas by total revenue. It is the second largest non-oil company in Texas (behind AT&T;) and the largest company in the Austin area.

History

Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created ''PCs Limited'' while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components. Michael Dell started trading in the belief that by selling personal computer systems directly to customers, PCs Limited could better understand customers' needs and provide the most effective computing solutions to meet those needs. Michael Dell dropped out of school in order to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting about $300,000 in expansion-capital from his family.

In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design—the "Turbo PC", sold for US$795. PCs Limited advertised its systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers and custom assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. The company grossed more than $73 million in its first year of trading.

The company changed its name to "Dell Computer Corporation" in 1988 and began expanding globally—first in Ireland. In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share. In 1992, ''Fortune magazine'' included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever.

In 1996, Dell began selling computers via its web site, and in 2002, Dell expanded its product line to include televisions, handhelds, digital audio players, and printers. Dell's first acquisition occurred in 1999 with the purchase of ConvergeNet Technologies. In 2003, the company was rebranded as simply "Dell Inc." to recognize the company's expansion beyond computers. From 2004 to 2007, Michael Dell stepped aside as CEO, while long-time Dell employee Kevin Rollins took the helm. During that time, Dell acquired Alienware, which introduced several new items to Dell products, including AMD microprocessors. To prevent cross-market products, Dell continues to run Alienware as a separate entity but still a wholly owned subsidiary.

Lackluster performance, however, in its lower-end computer business prompted Michael Dell to take on the role of CEO again. The founder announced a change campaign called "Dell 2.0," reducing headcount and diversifying the company's product offerings. The company acquired EqualLogic on January 28, 2008 to gain a foothold in the iSCSI storage market. Because Dell already had an efficient manufacturing process, integrating EqualLogic's products into the company drove manufacturing prices down.

On September 21, 2009, Dell announced its intent to acquire Perot Systems (based in Plano, Texas) in a reported $3.9 billion deal. Perot Systems brought applications development, systems integration, and strategic consulting services through its operations in the U.S. and 10 other countries. In addition, it provided a variety of business process outsourcing services, including claims processing and call center operations.

On August 16, 2010, Dell announced its intent to acquire the data storage company 3PAR. On September 2, 2010 Hewlett-Packard offered $33 a share, which Dell declined to match.

On February 10, 2010, Dell acquired KACE Networks a leader in Systems Management Appliances. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

On November 2, 2010, Dell acquired Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) integration leader Boomi. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Dell Facilities

Dell's headquarters are located in Round Rock, Texas. As of 2010 the company employs about 16,000 people in the facility, which has of space. As of 1999 almost half of the general fund of the City of Round Rock originates from sales taxes generated from the Dell headquarters.

The company previously had its headquarters in the Arboretum complex in northern Austin, Texas. In 1989 Dell occupied in the Arboretum complex. In 1990 Dell had 1,200 employees in its headquarters. In 1993 Dell submitted a document to Round Rock officials, titled "Dell Computer Corporate Headquarters, Round Rock, Texas, May 1993 Schematic Design." Despite the filing, during that year the company said that it was not going to move its headquarters. In 1994 Dell announced that it was moving most of its employees out of the Arboretum, but that it was going to continue to occupy the top floor of the Arboretum and that the company's official headquarters address would continue to be the Arboretum. The top floor continued to hold Dell's board room, demonstration center, and visitor meeting room. Less than one month prior to August 29, 1994, Dell moved 1,100 customer support and telephone sales employees to Round Rock. Dell's lease in the Arboretum had been scheduled to expire in 1994. By 1996 Dell was moving its headquarters to Round Rock. As of January 1996 3,500 people still worked at the then-current Dell headquarters. One building of the Round Rock headquarters, Round Rock 3, had space for 6,400 employees and was scheduled to be completed in November 1996. In 1998 Dell announced that it was going to add two buildings to its Round Rock complex, adding of office space to the complex.

In 2000 Dell announced that it would lease of space in the Las Cimas office complex in unincorporated Travis County, Texas, between Austin and West Lake Hills, to house the company's executive offices and corporate headquarters. 100 senior executives were scheduled to work in the building by the end of 2000. In January 2001 the company leased the space in Las Cimas 2, located along Loop 360. Las Cimas 2 housed Dell's executives, the investment operations, and some corporate functions. Dell also had an option for of space in Las Cimas 3. After a slowdown in business required reducing employees and production capacity, Dell decided to sublease its offices in two buildings in the Las Cimas office complex. In 2002 Dell announced that it planned to sublease its space to another tenant; the company planned to move its headquarters back to Round Rock once a tenant was secured. By 2003 Dell moved its headquarters back to Round Rock. It leased all of Las Cimas I and II, with a total of , for about a seven year period after 2003. By that year roughly of that space was absorbed by new subtenants.

In 2008 Dell switched the power sources of the Round Rock headquarters to more environmentally friendly ones, with 60% of the total power coming from TXU Energy wind farms and 40% coming from the Austin Community Landfill gas-to-energy plant operated by Waste Management, Inc.

Dell facilities in the United States are located in Austin, Texas; Nashua, New Hampshire; Nashville, Tennessee; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Peoria, Illinois; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Eden Prairie, Minnesota (Dell Compellent); and Miami, Florida. Facilities located abroad include Penang, Malaysia; Xiamen, China; Bracknell, UK; Manila, Philippines Bangalore, India; Hortolandia, Brazil; Łódź, Poland and Limerick, Ireland.

The US and India are the only countries which have all of Dell's business functions and provide support globally: Research and Development, manufacturing, finance, analysis, customer care.

Products

Scope and brands

The corporation markets specific brand names to different market segments.

Its Business/Corporate class represent brands where the company advertising emphasizes long life-cycles, reliability, and serviceability. Such brands include:

OptiPlex (office desktop computer systems)

Vostro (office/small business desktop and notebook systems)

n Series (desktop and notebook computers shipped with Linux or FreeDOS installed)

Latitude (business-focused notebooks)

Precision (workstation systems and high-performance notebooks),

PowerEdge (business servers)

PowerVault (direct-attach and network-attached storage)

PowerConnect (network switches)

Dell/Compellent (storage area networks)

EqualLogic (enterprise class iSCSI SANs)

Dell's Home Office/Consumer class emphasizes value, performance, and expandability. These brands include:

Inspiron (budget desktop and notebook computers)

Studio (mainstream desktop and laptop computers)

XPS (high-end desktop and notebook computers)

Studio XPS (high-end design-focus of XPS systems and extreme multimedia capability)

Alienware (high-performance gaming systems)

Adamo (high-end luxury laptop)

Dell EMR(electronic medical records)

Dell's Peripherals class includes USB keydrives, LCD televisions, and printers; Dell monitors includes LCD TVs, plasma TVs and projectors for HDTV and monitors. Dell UltraSharp is further a high-end brand of monitors.

Dell service and support brands include the ''Dell Solution Station'' (extended domestic support services, previously "Dell on Call"), ''Dell Support Center'' (extended support services abroad), ''Dell Business Support'' (a commercial service-contract that provides an industry-certified technician with a lower call-volume than in normal queues), ''Dell Everdream Desktop Management'' ("Software as a Service" remote-desktop management), and ''Your Tech Team'' (a support-queue available to home users who purchased their systems either through Dell's website or through Dell phone-centers).

Discontinued products and brands include Axim (PDA; discontinued April 9, 2007), Dimension (home and small office desktop computers; discontinued July 2007), Dell Digital Jukebox (MP3 player; discontinued August 2006), Dell PowerApp (application-based servers), and Dell Omniplex (desktop and tower computers previously supported to run server and desktop operating systems).

Manufacturing

From its early beginnings, Dell operated as a pioneer in the "configure to order" approach to manufacturing—delivering individual PCs configured to customer specifications. In contrast, most PC manufacturers in those times delivered large orders to intermediaries on a quarterly basis.

To minimize the delay between purchase and delivery, Dell has a general policy of manufacturing its products close to its customers. This also allows for implementing a just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing approach, which minimizes inventory costs. Low inventory is another signature of the Dell business model—a critical consideration in an industry where components depreciate very rapidly.

Dell's manufacturing process covers assembly, software installation, functional testing (including "burn-in"), and quality control. Throughout most of the company's history, Dell manufactured desktop machines in-house and contracted out manufacturing of base notebooks for configuration in-house. However, the company's approach has changed. The 2006 Annual Report states "we are continuing to expand our use of original design manufacturing partnerships and manufacturing outsourcing relationships." ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported in September, 2008 that "Dell has approached contract computer manufacturers with offers to sell" their plants.

Assembly of desktop computers for the North American market formerly took place at Dell plants in Austin, Texas (original location) and Lebanon, Tennessee (opened in 1999). The plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (opened in 2005) is scheduled to cease operations in November 2010, while the Miami, Florida facility of its Alienware subsidiary remains in operation. Dell servers come from Austin, Texas.

Dell's desktop plant in Austin, Texas was shut down in 2008. It closed its desktop manufacturing in Lebanon in early 2009. The last major U.S. plant in North Carolina is scheduled to close in November 2010. It is expected that most of the work carried out in North Carolina will be transferred to contract manufacturers in Asia and Mexico, though Dell said some of the work will move to its own factories overseas.

Dell assembles computers for the EMEA market at Limerick in the Republic of Ireland, and employs about 4,500 people in that country. Dell began manufacturing in Limerick in 1991 and went on to become Ireland's largest exporter of goods and its second-largest company and foreign investor. On January 8, 2009, Dell announced that it would move all Dell manufacturing in Limerick to Dell's new plant in the Polish city of Łódź by January 2010. European Union officials said they would investigate a €52.7million aid package the Polish government used to attract Dell away from Ireland. European Manufacturing Facility 1 (EMF1, opened in 1990) and EMF3 form part of the Raheen Industrial Estate near Limerick. EMF2 (previously a Wang facility, later occupied by Flextronics, situated in Castletroy) closed in 2002, and Dell Inc. has consolidated production into EMF3 (EMF1 now contains only offices). Subsidies from the Polish government did not keep Dell for a long time. Manufacturing Facility in Lodz was sold to Foxconn as announced in Dec 2009.

Dell's Alienware subsidiary also manufactures PCs in an Athlone, Ireland plant. Construction of EMF4 in Łódź, Poland has : Dell started production there in autumn 2007.

Dell opened plants in Penang, Malaysia in 1995, and in Xiamen, China in 1999. These facilities serve the Asian market and assemble 95% of Dell notebooks. Dell Inc. has invested an estimated $60 million in a new manufacturing unit in Chennai, India, to support the sales of its products in the Indian subcontinent. Indian-made products will bear the "Made in India" mark. In 2007 the Chennai facility had the target of producing 400,000 desktop PCs, and plans envisaged it starting to produce notebook PCs and other products in the second half of 2007.

Dell moved desktop and PowerEdge server manufacturing for the South American market from the Eldorado do Sul plant opened in 1999, to a new plant in Hortolandia, Brazil in 2007.

Technical support

Dell routes technical support queries according to component-type and to the level of support purchased: # Basic support provides business-hours telephone support and next business-day on-site support/ Return-to-Base, or Collect and Return Services (based on contracts purchased at point of sale) # Dell ProSupport provides 24x7x365 telephone and online support, a selection of 4 or 6-hour onsite support after telephone-based troubleshooting, and a Mission Critical option with two-hour onsite support, for customers who choose the highest level of support for their most critical hardware assets.

Dell's Consumer division offers 24x7 phone based and online troubleshooting in certain markets such as the United States and Canada. In 2008 Dell redesigned services-and-support for businesses with "Dell ProSupport", offering customers more options to adaptservices to fit their needs. Rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach, Dell allows various options for its customers.

In addition, the company provides protection services, advisory services, multivendor hardware support, "how-to" support for software applications, collaborative support with many third-party vendors, and online parts and labor dispatching for customers who diagnose and troubleshoot their hardware. Dell also provides Dell ProSupport customers access to a crisis-center to handle major outages, or problems caused by natural disasters.

Commercial aspects

Organization

A board of directors of nine people runs the company. Michael Dell, the founder of the company, serves as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. Other board members include Don Carty, William Gray, Judy Lewent, Klaus Luft, Alex Mandl, Michael A. Miles, and Sam Nunn. Shareholders elect the nine board members at meetings, and those board members who do not get a majority of votes must submit a resignation to the board, which will subsequently choose whether or not to accept the resignation. The board of directors usually sets up five committees having oversight over specific matters. These committees include the Audit Committee, which handles accounting issues, including auditing and reporting; the Compensation Committee, which approves compensation for the CEO and other employees of the company; the Finance Committee, which handles financial matters such as proposed mergers and acquisitions; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters (including nomination of the board); and the Antitrust Compliance Committee, which attempts to prevent company practices from violating antitrust laws.

The corporate structure and management of Dell extends beyond the board of directors. The Dell Global Executive Management Committee sets strategic directions. Dell has regional senior vice-presidents for countries other than the United States, including David Marmonti for EMEA and Stephen J. Felice for Asia/Japan. , other officers included Martin Garvin (senior vice president for worldwide procurement) and Susan E. Sheskey (vice president and Chief Information Officer).

Marketing

Dell advertisements have appeared in several types of media including television, the Internet, magazines, catalogs and newspapers. Some of Dell Inc's marketing strategies include lowering prices at all times of the year, offering free bonus products (such as Dell printers), and offering free shipping in order to encourage more sales and to stave off competitors. In 2006, Dell cut its prices in an effort to maintain its 19.2% market share. However, this also cut profit-margins by more than half, from 8.7 to 4.3 percent. To maintain its low prices, Dell continues to accept most purchases of its products via the Internet and through the telephone network, and to move its customer-care division to India and El Salvador.

A popular United States television and print ad campaign in the early 2000s featured the actor Ben Curtis playing the part of "Steven", a lightly mischievous blond-haired youth who came to the assistance of bereft computer purchasers. Each television advertisement usually ended with Steven's catch-phrase: "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell!"

A subsequent advertising campaign featured interns at Dell headquarters (with Curtis' character appearing in a small cameo at the end of one of the first commercials in this particular campaign).

A Dell advertising campaign for the XPS line of gaming computers featured in print in the September 2006 issue of ''Wired''. It used as a tagline the common term in Internet and gamer slang: "FTW", meaning "For The Win". However, Dell Inc. soon dropped the campaign.

In the first-person shooter game F.E.A.R. Extraction Point, several computers visible on desks within the game have recognizable Dell XPS model characteristics, sometimes even including the Dell logo on the monitors.

In 2007, Dell switched advertising agencies in the US from BBDO to Working Mother Media. In July 2007, Dell released new advertising created by Working Mother to support the Inspiron and XPS lines. The ads featured music from the Flaming Lips and Devo who re-formed especially to record the song in the ad "Work it Out". Also in 2007, Dell began using the slogan "Yours is here" to say that it customizes computers to fit customers' requirements.

Criticisms of Dell's marketing of laptop security

In 2008, Dell received press coverage over its claim of having the world's most secure laptops, specifically, its Latitude D630 and Latitude D830. At Lenovo's request, the (U.S.) National Advertising Division (NAD) evaluated the claim, and reported that Dell did not have enough evidence to support it.

Dell kiosks

Starting in 2002, Dell opened kiosk locations in shopping malls across the United States in order to give personal service to customers who preferred this method of shopping to using the Internet or the telephone-system. Despite the added expense, prices at the kiosks match or beat prices available through other retail channels. Starting in 2005, Dell expanded kiosk locations to include shopping malls across Australia, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong.

On January 30, 2008, Dell shut down all 140 kiosks in the U.S. due to expansion into retail stores.

Dell stores in the United States of America

Dell first opened their retail stores in India.

In 2006, Dell Inc. opened one full store, in area, at NorthPark Center in Dallas, Texas. It operates the retail outlet seven days a week to display about 36 models, including PCs and televisions. As at the kiosks, customers can only see demonstration-computers and place orders through agents. Dell then delivers purchased items just as if the customer had placed the order by phone or over the Internet.

In addition to showcasing products, the stores also support on-site warranties and non-warranty service ("Dell Solution Station"). Services offered include repairing computer video-cards and removing spyware from hard drives.

On February 14, 2008, Dell closed the Service Center in its Dallas NorthPark store and laid off all the technical staff there.

Dell Partner Program

In late 2007, Dell Inc. announced that it planned to expand its program to value-added resellers (VARs), giving it the official name of "Dell Partner Direct" and a new Website.

Retail in the United States

In the early 1990s, Dell also sold its products through Best Buy, Costco and Sam's Club stores in the United States. Dell stopped this practice in 1994, citing low profit-margins on the business. In 2003, Dell briefly sold products in Sears stores in the U.S. In 2007, Dell started shipping its products to major retailers in the U.S. once again, starting with Sam's Club and Wal-Mart. Staples, the largest office-supply retailer in the U.S., and Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer in the U.S., became Dell retail partners later that same year.

Retail around the world

, Dell products shipped to one of the largest office-supply retailers in Canada, Staples Business Depot. In April 2008, Future Shop and Best Buy began carrying a subset of Dell products, such as certain desktops, laptops, printers, and monitors.

Since some shoppers in certain markets show reluctance to purchase technological products through the phone or the Internet, Dell has looked into opening retail operations in some countries in Central Europe and Russia. In April 2007, Dell opened a retail store in Budapest. In October of the same year, Dell opened a retail store in Moscow.

In the UK, HMV's flagship Trocadero store has sold Dell XPS PCs since December 2007. From January 2008 the UK stores of DSGi have sold Dell products (in particular, through Currys and PC World stores). As of 2008, the large supermarket-chain Tesco has sold Dell laptops and desktops in outlets throughout the UK.

In May 2008, Dell reached an agreement with office supply chain, Officeworks (part of Coles Group), to stock a few modified models in the Inspiron desktop and notebook range. These models have slightly different model numbers, but almost replicate the ones available from the Dell Store. Dell continued its retail push in the Australian market with its partnership with Harris Technology (another part of Coles Group) in November of the same year. In addition, Dell expanded its retail distributions in Australia through an agreement with discount electrical retailer, The Good Guys, known for "Slashing Prices". Dell agreed to distribute a variety of makes of both desktops and notebooks, including Studio and XPS systems in late 2008. Dell and Dick Smith Electronics (owned by Woolworths Limited) reached an agreement to expand within Dick Smith's 400 stores throughout Australia and New Zealand in May 2009 (1 year since Officeworks — owned by Coles Group — reached a deal). The retailer has agreed to distribute a variety of Inspiron and Studio notebooks, with minimal Studio desktops from the Dell range. , Dell continues to run and operate its various kiosks in 18 shopping centres throughout Australia. On March 31, 2010 Dell announced to Australian Kiosk employees that they were shutting down the Australian/New Zealand Dell kiosk program.

Competition

Dell's major competitors include Hewlett-Packard (HP), Acer, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, Asus, Lenovo, IBM, Samsung, Apple and Sun Microsystems. Dell and its subsidiary, Alienware, compete in the enthusiast market against AVADirect, Falcon Northwest, VoodooPC (a subsidiary of HP), and other manufacturers. In the second quarter of 2006, Dell had between 18% and 19% share of the worldwide personal computer market, compared to HP with roughly 15%.

, Dell lost its lead in the PC-business to Hewlett-Packard. Both Gartner and IDC estimated that in the third quarter of 2006, HP shipped more units worldwide than Dell did. Dell's 3.6% growth paled in comparison to HP's 15% growth during the same period. The problem got worse in the fourth quarter, when Gartner estimated that Dell PC shipments declined 8.9% (versus HP's 23.9% growth). As a result, at the end of 2006 Dell's overall PC market-share stood at 13.9% (versus HP's 17.4%).

IDC reported that Dell lost more server market share than any of the top four competitors in that arena. IDC's Q4 2006 estimates show Dell's share of the server market at 8.1%, down from 9.5% in the previous year. This represents a 8.8% loss year-over-year, primarily to competitors EMC and IBM.

Partnership with EMC

The Dell/EMC brand applies solely to products that result from Dell's partnership with EMC Corporation. In some cases Dell and EMC jointly design such products; other cases involve EMC products for which Dell will provide support — generally midrange storage systems, such as fibre channel and iSCSI storage area networks. The relationship also promotes and sells OEM versions of backup, recovery, replication and archiving software.

On December 9, 2008, Dell and EMC announced the multi-year extension, through 2013, of their strategic partnership that began in 2001. In addition, Dell plans to expand its product line-up by adding the EMC Celerra NX4 storage system to the portfolio of Dell/EMC family of networked storage systems, as well as partnering on a new line of de-duplication products as part of its TierDisk family of data-storage devices.

Environmental record

Dell committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its global activities by 40% by 2015, with 2008 fiscal year as the baseline year. It is listed in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics that scores leading electronics manufacturers according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change. In October 2010, Dell ranked 10th out of 18 listed electronics makers (increasing its score to 4.9 from 4.3, which it gained in the previous ranking from May 2010).

Dell was the first company to publicly state a timeline for the elimination of toxic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which it planned to phase out by the end of 2009. It revised this commitment and now aims to remove these toxics by the end of 2011 but only in its computing products. In March 2010, Greenpeace activists protested at Dell offices in Bangalore, Amsterdam and Copenhagen calling for Dell’s founder and CEO Michael Dell to ‘drop the toxics’ and claiming that Dell’s aspiration to be ‘the greenest technology company on the planet’ was ‘hypocritical’. Dell has launched its first products completely free of PVC and BFRs with the G-Series monitors (G2210 and G2410) in 2009.

Green initiatives

Dell became the first company in the information technology industry to establish a product-recycling goal (in 2004) and completed the implementation of its global consumer recycling-program in 2006. On February 6, 2007, the National Recycling Coalition awarded Dell its "Recycling Works" award for efforts to promote producer responsibility. On July 19, 2007, Dell announced that it had exceeded targets in working to achieve a multi-year goal of recovering 275 million pounds of computer equipment by 2009. The company reported the recovery of 78 million pounds (nearly 40,000 tons) of IT equipment from customers in 2006, a 93-percent increase over 2005; and 12.4% of the equipment Dell sold seven years earlier.

On June 5, 2007 Dell set a goal of becoming the greenest technology company on Earth for the long term. The company launched a zero-carbon initiative that includes: # reducing Dell's carbon intensity by 15 percent by 2012 # requiring primary suppliers to report carbon emissions data during quarterly business reviews # partnering with customers to build the "greenest PC on the planet" # expanding the company's carbon-offsetting program, "Plant a Tree for Me".

The company introduced the term "The Re-Generation" during a round table in London commemorating 2007 World Environment Day. "The Re-Generation" refers to people of all ages throughout the world who want to "make a difference" in improving the world's environment. Dell also talked about plans to take the lead in setting an environmental standard for the "technology industry" and maintaining that leadership in the future.

Dell reports its environmental performance in an annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report that follows the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) protocol. Dell's 2008 CSR report ranked as "Application Level B" as "checked by GRI".

The company aims to reduce its external environmental impact through energy-efficient evolution of products, and also reduce its direct operational impact through energy-efficiency programmes. Internal energy-efficiency programmes reportedly save the company more than $3 million annually in energy-cost savings. The largest component of the company's internal energy-efficiency savings comes through PC power management: the company expects to save $1.8 million in energy costs through using specialised energy-management software on a network of 50,000 PCs.

Criticism

In the 1990s, Dell switched from using primarily ATX motherboards and PSU to using boards and power-supplies with mechanically identical but differently wired connectors. This meant customers wishing to upgrade their hardware would have to replace parts with scarce Dell-compatible parts instead of commonly available parts. However, company practice in this respect changed in 2003.

In 2005, complaints about Dell more than doubled to 1,533, after earnings grew 52% that year.

In 2006, Dell acknowledged that it had problems with customer service. Issues included call-transfers of more than 45% of calls and long wait-times. Dell's blog detailed the response: "We're spending more than a $100 million — and a lot of blood, sweat and tears of talented people — to fix this." Later in the year, the company increased its spending on customer service to $150 million.

On August 17, 2007, Dell Inc. announced that after an internal investigation into its accounting practices it would restate and reduce earnings from 2003 through to the first quarter of 2007 by a total amount of between $50 million and $150 million, or 2 cents to 7 cents per share. The investigation, begun in November 2006, resulted from concerns raised by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over some documents and information that Dell Inc. had submitted. It was alleged that Dell had not disclosed large exclusivity payments received from Intel for agreeing not to buy processors from a rival manufacturer. In 2010 Dell finally paid $100 million to settle the SEC's charges of fraud. Michael Dell and other executives also paid penalties and suffered other sanctions, without admitting or denying the charges.

In July 2009, Dell apologized after the firm offered its Latitude E4300 notebook at NT$18,558 (US$580), 70% lower than usual price of NT$60,900 (US$1900) in its Taiwan website. The firm withdrew orders and offered a voucher of up to NT$20,000 (US$625) a customer in compensation. The consumer rights authorities in Taiwan fined Dell NT$1 million (US$31250) for customer rights infringements. Many consumers sued the firm for the unfair compensation. A court in southern Taiwan ordered the firm to deliver 18 laptops and 76 flat-panel monitors to 31 consumers for NT$490,000 (US$15,120), less than a third of the normal price. The court said the event could hardly be regarded as mistakes, as the prestigious firm said the company mispriced its products twice in Taiwanese website within 3 weeks.

See also

List of Dell ownership activities

List of computer system manufacturers

References

Further reading

Dell Company Information

Dell Company Profile & News

Michael Dell, Catherine Fredman, ''Direct From Dell'', ISBN 0-88730-914-3

"Dell Inks Computer Deal in China" on Time.com (a division of ''Time'' Magazine), 2007-09-24, retrieved 2007-10-14

Dell as the seventh-most-admired computer company in the USA, eighth overall, and seventh worldwide. ''Fortune'', ''Most Admired Companies 2006''. Dell Named Top Computer Hardware Provider for Life Sciences. ''Reuters''

Dell Ottawa references:

CNWGroup news website

* Dell official website

Ottawa Business Journal

''BBC News'', August 21, 2003, ''Dell makes grab for market share''

''USA Today'', January 20, 2001, ''Dell business model turns to muscle as rivals struggle''

''Ubuntu Forums'', June 7, 2007, ''Dell's with Ubuntu called Dellbuntu''

External links

Dell.com

About Dell

Dell Reviews

Dell at WN

Dell mobile website

Category:Companies established in 1984 Category:Companies based in Texas Category:Companies based in Austin, Texas Category:Computer companies of the United States Category:Computer hardware companies Category:Mobile phone manufacturers Category:Electronics companies of the United States Category:Networking hardware companies Category:Round Rock, Texas Category:Publicly traded companies Category:Cloud computing providers Category:Netbook manufacturers Category:Multinational companies headquartered in the United States Category:Display technology companies Category:Consumer electronics brands Category:Home computer hardware companies Category:Online retail companies of the United States

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name	Michael Dell
alma mater	University of Texas Austin, Dropout
birth date	February 23, 1965
birth place	Houston, Texas, U.S.
occupation	Chairman and CEO, Dell, Inc.
networth	US$14.6 billion (2011)
spouse	Susan Dell
children	4
footnotes	}}

Michael Saul Dell (born February 23, 1965) is an American business magnate and the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Dell Inc. He is one of the richest people in the world, ranked 44 with a net worth of US$14.6 billion in 2011.

Early life and education

Michael Dell was born to a well-off, Texan Jewish family, on February 23, 1965. The son of an orthodontist and a stockbroker, Dell attended Herod Elementary School in Houston, Texas. In a bid to enter business early, he applied to take a high school equivalency exam at age eight. In his early teens, he invested his earnings from part-time jobs in stocks and precious metals.

Dell purchased his first calculator at age seven and encountered his first teletype machine in junior high, which he programmed after school. At age 15, after playing with computers at Radio Shack, he got his first computer, an Apple II, which he promptly disassembled to see how it worked. Dell attended Memorial High School in Houston, selling subscriptions to the ''Houston Post'' in the summer. While making cold calls, Dell observed that newlyweds and people moving into new homes were most likely to buy a subscription. He targeted this demographic group by collecting names from marriage and mortgage applications. Dell earned $18,000 that year, exceeding the annual income of his history and economics teacher.

Career

While a pre-med student at the University of Texas at Austin, Dell started an informal business upgrading computers in room 2713 of the Dobie Center residential building. He then applied for a vendor license to bid on contracts for the State of Texas, winning bids by not having the overhead of a computer store.

In January 1984, Dell banked on his conviction that the potential cost savings of a manufacturer selling PCs directly had enormous advantages over the conventional indirect retail channel. In January 1984, Dell registered his company as "PC's Limited". Operating out of a condominium, the business sold between $50,000 and $80,000 in upgraded PCs, kits, and add-on components. In May, Dell incorporated the company as "Dell Computer Corporation" and relocated it to a business center in North Austin. The company employed a few order takers, a few more people to fulfill them, and, as Dell recalled, a manufacturing staff "consisting of three guys with screwdrivers sitting at six-foot tables." The venture's capitalization cost was $1,000.

In 1992 at the age of 27, Dell became the youngest CEO to have his company ranked in ''Fortune'' magazine's list of the top 500 corporations. In 1996, Dell started selling computers over the Web, the same year his company launched its first servers. Dell Inc. soon reported about $1 million in sales per day from dell.com. In the first quarter of 2001, Dell Inc. reached a world market share of 12.8 percent, passing Compaq to become the world's largest PC maker. The metric marked the first time the rankings had shifted over the previous seven years. The company's combined shipments of desktops, notebooks and servers grew 34.3 percent worldwide and 30.7 percent in the United States at a time when competitors' sales were shrinking.

In 1998, Dell founded MSD Capital L.P. to exclusively manage his and his family's investments. Investment activities include publicly-traded securities, private equity activities, and real estate. The firm employs 80 people and has offices in New York, Santa Monica and London. Dell is not involved in day-to-day operations.

At a speech before the Detroit Economic Club in November, 1999, Dell defined the "3 C's" of e-commerce (content, commerce, and community) while articulating his strategy for offering a superior customer experience online.

On March 4, 2004, Dell stepped down as CEO of Dell Inc. but stayed as chairman of the board, while Kevin B. Rollins, then president and COO, became president and CEO. On January 31, 2007, Dell returned as CEO at the request of the board, succeeding Rollins.

Accolades for Dell include: "Entrepreneur of the Year" (at age 24) from ''Inc.'' magazine; "Top CEO in American Business" from ''Worth'' magazine; "CEO of the Year" from ''Financial World'', ''Industry Week'' and ''Chief Executive'' magazines. Dell serves on the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, the executive committee of the International Business Council, the U.S. Business Council, and the governing board of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India. He previously served as a member of the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

In July 2010 Dell agreed to pay a $4 million penalty to settle SEC charges of disclosure and accounting fraud in relation to undisclosed payments from Intel Corporation. Dell Corporation and two other company executives also paid to settle all the charges.

Writings

Dell's 1999 book, ''Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry'', is an account of his early life, his company's founding, growth and missteps, as well as lessons learned. The book was written in collaboration with Catherine Fredman.

Wealth and personal life

As of 2011, Forbes estimates Dell's net worth at $14.6 billion.

Dell resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, Susan, and their four children.

Philanthropy

In 1999, Michael and Susan Dell established the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, which focuses on children’s causes. By 2010, the foundation had committed more than $530 million to assist nonprofit organizations serving urban communities in the United States and India. The foundation has also provided $65 million in grants to three health-related organizations associated with the University of Texas: the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Advancement of Healthy Living, the Dell Pediatric Research Institute, and the Dell Children’s Medical Center, as well as funding for a new computer science building on the University of Texas campus.

In 2002, Dell received an honorary doctorate in Economic Science from the University of Limerick in honor of his investment in Ireland and the local community and for his support for educational initiatives.

Political contributions

In 2004, Susan and Michael Dell were among 53 contributors of $250,000 (the maximum legal donation) to the second inauguration of President George W. Bush.

Criticism

In the April 2011 issue of ''Mother Jones'', a timeline of Michael Dell's life is included in the article ''American Magnate: Michael Dell: How a homegrown geek outsourced, downsized, and tax-breaked his way to the top.'' The article juxtaposes the CEO's spending on luxurious homes and private jet travel with his pursuit of tax breaks and tax holidays and Dell Computer's outsourcing of jobs overseas.

References

Bibliography

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:American chief executives Category:American billionaires Category:American philanthropists Category:American Jews Category:People from Houston, Texas Category:Texas Republicans Category:University of Texas at Austin alumni

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name	Steve Jobs
birth name	Steven Paul Jobs
birth date	February 24, 1955
birth place
death date	October 05, 2011
death place	Palo Alto, California, U.S.
nationality	American
occupation	Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc., Co-founder and CEO, Pixar, Co-founder and CEO, NeXT Inc.
alma mater	Reed College (dropped out)
years active	1974–2011
boards	The Walt Disney Company, Apple Inc.
religion	Zen Buddhism
spouse	Laurene Powell(1991–2011, his death)
children	4 – Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Reed, Erin, Eve
relatives	Mona Simpson (sister)
signature	Steve Jobs signature.svg
signature size	120px }}

Steven Paul Jobs (; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.

After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off as Pixar. He was credited in ''Toy Story'' (1995) as an executive producer. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company in 2006, making Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder at seven percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.

After difficulties developing a new Mac OS, Apple purchased NeXT in 1996 in order to use NeXTSTEP as the basis for what became Mac OS X. As part of the deal Jobs was named Apple advisor. As Apple floundered, Jobs took control of the company and was named "interim CEO" in 1997, or as he jokingly referred to it, "iCEO". Facing near bankruptcy at the time of his return, Jobs quickly improved the company's fortunes and returned it to profitability in 1998. Over the next decade, Jobs oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad and on the services side, the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store. The enormous success of these products and services, providing years of stable financial returns, propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable company in 2011. The reinvigoration of the company is regarded as one of the greatest business turnaround stories in history.

In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as his health declined. On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs resigned as Apple CEO in August that year and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011. He continues to receive honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries.

Early life and education

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on 24 February 1955, to two university students, Joanne Carole Schieble and Syrian born Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (), who were both unmarried at the time. Jandali who was teaching in Wisconsin when Steve was born in 1955, said he had no choice but to put the baby up for adoption because his girlfriend's family objected to their relationship. He was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs (1922–1993) and Clara Jobs (1924–1986). Clara's maiden name was Hagopian. When asked about his "adoptive parents," Jobs replied emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs "were my parents." He later stated in his authorized biography that they "were my parents 1,000%." His biological parents subsequently married (December 1955), had a second child Mona Simpson in 1957, and divorced in 1962.

The Jobs family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, California when Steve was five years old. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, Patti. Paul Jobs, a machinist for a company that made lasers, taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands. Clara was an accountant who taught him to read before he went to school. Clara Jobs had been a payroll clerk for Varian Associates, one of the first high-tech firms in what became known as Silicon Valley.

Jobs attended Monta Loma Elementary, Mountain View, Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. He frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California, and was later hired there, working with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester, he continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Early career

In 1974, Jobs took a job as a technician at Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California. He traveled to India in mid-1974 to visit Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, an early Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. When they got to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted as Neem Karoli Baba had died in September 1973. Then they made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram of Hariakhan Baba. In India, they spent a lot of time on bus rides from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh and back, then up to Himachal Pradesh and back.

Jobs left India after staying for seven months and returned to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke, with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life". He also became a serious practitioner of Zen Buddhism, engaged in lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Sōtō Zen monastery in the US, considered taking up monastic residence, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen. He later said that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.

Jobs returned to Atari and was assigned to create a circuit board for the game ''Breakout''. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest in or knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the bonus until ten years later, but said that had Jobs told him about it and said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.

Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak in 1975. He greatly admired Edwin H. Land, the inventor of instant photography and founder of Polaroid Corporation, and explicitly modeled his own career after that of Land's.

The revised, second-generation NeXTcube was released in 1990, also. Jobs touted it as the first "interpersonal" computer that would replace the personal computer. With its innovative NeXTMail multimedia email system, NeXTcube could share voice, image, graphics, and video in email for the first time. "Interpersonal computing is going to revolutionize human communications and groupwork", Jobs told reporters. Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of and attention to NeXTcube's magnesium case. This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel. The company reported its first profit of $1.03 million in 1994. In 1996, NeXT Software, Inc. released WebObjects, a framework for Web application development. After NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc. in 1997, WebObjects was used to build and run the Apple Store, MobileMe services, and the iTunes Store.

Pixar and Disney

In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.

The first film produced by the partnership, ''Toy Story'', with Jobs credited as executive producer, brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released in 1995. Over the next 15 years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company produced box-office hits ''A Bug's Life'' (1998); ''Toy Story 2'' (1999); ''Monsters, Inc.'' (2001); ''Finding Nemo'' (2003); ''The Incredibles'' (2004); ''Cars'' (2006); ''Ratatouille'' (2007); ''WALL-E'' (2008); ''Up'' (2009); and ''Toy Story 3'' (2010). ''Finding Nemo'', ''The Incredibles'', ''Ratatouille'', ''WALL-E'', ''Up'' and ''Toy Story 3'' each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.

In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership, and in early 2004, Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films after its contract with Disney expired.

In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. When the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately seven percent of the company's stock. Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceeded those of Eisner, who holds 1.7 percent, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who until his 2009 death held about one percent of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner — especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar — accelerated Eisner's ousting. Jobs joined the company's board of directors upon completion of the merger and also helped oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses from a seat on a special six-person steering committee. Upon Jobs's death his shares in Disney were transferred to the Steven P. Jobs Trust led by Laurene Jobs.

Return to Apple

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $427 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996, bringing Jobs back to the company he co-founded. Jobs became ''de facto'' chief after then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997. He was formally named interim chief executive in September. In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs's summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company." Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance, the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title "iCEO".

Inventions and designs

His design sense was greatly influenced by the Buddhism which he experienced in India while on a seven-month spiritual journey. His sense of intuition was also influenced by the spiritual people with whom he studied.

, Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 342 United States patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages. Most of these are design patents (specific product designs) as opposed to utility patents (inventions). He has 43 issued US patents on inventions. The patent on the Mac OS X Dock user interface with "magnification" feature was issued the day before he died.

Philanthropy

Arik Hesseldahl of ''BusinessWeek'' magazine stated that "Jobs isn't widely known for his association with philanthropic causes", compared to Bill Gates's efforts. Jobs said (in 1985) that he does charitable acts privately. After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs initially. Later, under Jobs, Apple signed to participate in Product Red program, producing red versions of devices to give profits from sales to charity. Apple has gone on to become the single largest contributor to the charity since its initial involvement with it. The chief of the Product Red project, singer Bono cited Jobs saying there was "nothing better than the chance to save lives," when he initially approached Apple with the invitation to participate in the program.

Personal life

Jobs's birth parents met at the University of Wisconsin. Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, a Syrian Muslim, taught there. Joanne Carole Schieble was his student; they were the same age because Jandali had "gotten his PhD really young." In December 1955, ten months after giving up their baby boy, Schieble and Jandali married. In 1957, they had a daughter Mona together. They divorced in 1962, and Jandali lost touch with his daughter. Her mother remarried and had Mona take the surname of her stepfather, so she became known as Mona Simpson.

In the 1980s, Jobs found his birth mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, who told him he had a biological sister, Mona Simpson. They met for the first time in 1985 and became close friends. The siblings kept their relationship secret until 1986, when Mona introduced him at a party for her first book.

After deciding to search for their father, Simpson found Jandali managing a coffee shop. Without knowing who his son had become, Jandali told Mona that he had previously managed a popular restaurant in the Silicon Valley where "Even Steve Jobs used to eat there. Yeah, he was a great tipper." In a taped interview with his biographer Walter Isaacson, aired on ''60 Minutes'', Jobs said: "When I was looking for my biological mother, obviously, you know, I was looking for my biological father at the same time, and I learned a little bit about him and I didn't like what I learned. I asked her to not tell him that we ever met...not tell him anything about me." Jobs was in occasional touch with his mother Joanne Simpson, who lives in a nursing home in Los Angeles. When speaking about his biological parents, Jobs stated: "They were my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more." Jandali stated in an interview with the ''The Sun'' in August 2011, that his efforts to contact Jobs were unsuccessful. Jandali mailed in his medical history after Jobs's pancreatic disorder was made public that year.

In her eulogy to Jobs at his memorial service, Mona Simpson stated: :I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I'd met my father, I tried to believe he'd changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people. Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

Jobs's first child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, was born in 1978, the daughter of his longtime partner Chris Ann Brennan, a Bay Area painter. For two years, she raised their daughter on welfare while Jobs denied paternity by claiming he was sterile; he later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter. Jobs later married Laurene Powell on March 18, 1991, in a ceremony at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Presiding over the wedding was Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen Buddhist monk. Their son, Reed, was born September 1991, followed by daughters Erin in August 1995, and Eve in 1998. The family lives in Palo Alto, California.

In the unauthorized biography, ''The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,'' author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan" (Dylan was the Apple icon's favorite musician). In another unauthorized biography, ''iCon: Steve Jobs'' by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children.

Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple occasions at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on ''60 Minutes'', he replied:

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people. Jobs told Walter Isaacson "...he came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style." He was a pescetarian.

Jobs's car was a silver 2008 Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG, which does not display its license plates, as he took advantage of a California law which gives a maximum of six months for new vehicles to receive plates; Jobs leased a new identical SL every six months.

In a 2011 interview with biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs revealed at one point he met with U.S. President Barack Obama, complained of the nation's shortage of software engineers, and told Mr. Obama that he was "headed for a one-term presidency." Jobs proposed that any foreign student who got an engineering degree at a U.S. university should automatically be offered a green card. After the meeting, Jobs commented, "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done.... It infuriates me."

Jobs contributed to a number of political candidates and causes during his life, giving $209,000 to Democrats, $19,000 to associated special interests and $1,000 to a Republican.

Health issues

In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with cancer, and in mid-2004, he announced to his employees that he had a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor; Jobs stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for mainstream medical intervention for nine months, instead consuming a special alternative medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease. According to Harvard researcher Dr. Ramzi Amir, his choice of alternative treatment "led to an unnecessarily early death". According to Jobs's biographer, Walter Isaacson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer – a decision he later regretted as his health declined." "Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004." He eventually underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004, that appeared to successfully remove the tumor.

Death

Jobs died at his California home around 3 p.m. on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer, He had lost consciousness the day before, and died with his wife, children and sister at his side.

His death was announced by Apple in a statement which read:

Jobs is survived by Laurene, his wife of 20 years, their three children, and Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his daughter from a previous relationship. His family released a statement saying that he "died peacefully".

For two weeks following his death, Apple's corporate Web site displayed a simple page, showing Jobs's name and lifespan next to his grayscale portrait. Clicking on the image led to an obituary, which read:

Also dedicating its homepage to Jobs was Pixar, with a photo of Jobs, John Lasseter and Edwin Catmull, and the eulogy they wrote:

An email address was also posted for the public to share their memories, condolences, and thoughts. Over a million tributes were sent, which are now displayed on the Steve Jobs memorial page.

Shortly after his death was announced, ABC, CBS, and NBC interrupted scheduled programming to broadcast this news. Numerous newspapers around the world carried news of his death on their front pages the next day. Several notable people, including US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and The Walt Disney Company's Bob Iger commented on the death of Jobs. ''Wired News'' collected reactions and posted them in tribute on their homepage.

A small private funeral was held on October 7, 2011, of which details were not revealed out of respect to Jobs's family. Apple announced on the same day that they had no plans for a public service, but were encouraging "well-wishers" to send their remembrance messages to an email address created to receive such messages. Sunday, October 16, 2011, was declared "Steve Jobs Day" by Governor Jerry Brown of California. On that day, an invitation-only memorial was held at Stanford University. Those in attendance include Apple and other tech company executives, members of the media, celebrities, close friends of Jobs, and politicians, along with Jobs's family. Bono, Yo Yo Ma, and Joan Baez performed at the service, which lasted longer than an hour. The service was highly secured, with guards at all of the university's gates, and a helicopter flying overhead from an area news station.

Both Apple and Microsoft flew their flags at half-staff throughout their respective headquarters and campuses. Bob Iger ordered all Disney properties, including Walt Disney World and Disneyland, to fly their flags at half-staff, from October 6 to 12, 2011.

A private memorial service for Apple employees was held on October 19, 2011, on the Apple Campus in Cupertino. Present were Cook, Bill Campbell, Norah Jones, Al Gore, and Coldplay, and Jobs's widow, Laurene, was in attendance. Some of Apple's retail stores closed briefly so employees could attend the memorial. A video of the service is available on Apple's website.

Jobs is buried at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, the only non-denominational cemetery in Palo Alto.

Major media published commemorative works. ''Time'' published a commemorative issue for Jobs on October 8, 2011. The issues cover featured a portrait of Jobs, taken by Norman Seeff, in which he is sitting in the lotus position holding the original Macintosh computer, first published in ''Rolling Stone'' in January 1984. The issue marked the eighth time Jobs has been featured on the cover of ''Time''. The issue included a photographic essay by Diana Walker, a retrospective on Apple by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, and a six-page essay by Walter Isaacson. Isaacson's essay served as a preview of his biography, ''Steve Jobs''.

''Bloomberg Businessweek'' also published a commemorative issue. The cover of the magazine features Apple-style simplicity, with a black-and-white, up-close photo of Jobs and his years of birth and death. The issue was published without advertisements. It featured extensive essays by Steve Jurvetson, John Sculley, Sean Wisely, William Gibson, and Walter Isaacson.

Free software pioneer Richard Stallman dissented from the prevailing hagiographic views of Jobs to draw attention to the tight corporate control Apple exercised over consumer computers and handheld devices, how Apple restricted news reporters, and persistently violated privacy: "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died". Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker asserted that "Jobs's sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him ... and ruthlessly refining it."

Although reporters wrote glowing elegies after Jobs died, ''Los Angeles Times'' media critic James Rainey reported that they "came courtesy of reporters who—after deadline and off the record—would tell stories about a company obsessed with secrecy to the point of paranoia. They remind us how Apple shut down a youthful fanboy blogger, punished a publisher that dared to print an unauthorized Jobs biography and repeatedly ran afoul of the most basic tenets of a free press."

Apple "has taken stances that, in my opinion, are outright hostile to the practice of journalism," said longtime Silicon Valley reporter Dan Gillmor. Under Jobs, Apple sued three "small fry" bloggers who reported tips about the company and its unreleased products and tried to use the courts to force them to reveal their sources. Under Jobs, Apple even sued a teenager, Nicholas Ciarelli, who wrote enthusiastic speculation about Apple products beginning at age 13. His popular blog, ThinkSecret, was a play on Apple's slogan "Think Different." Rainey wrote that Apple wanted to kill ThinkSecret as "It thought any leaks, even favorable ones, diluted the punch of its highly choreographed product launches with Jobs, in his iconic jeans and mock turtleneck outfit, as the star."

Honors and public recognition

After Apple's founding, Jobs became a symbol of his company and industry. When ''Time'' named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", the magazine published a long profile of Jobs as "the most famous maestro of the micro".

Jobs was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, with Steve Wozniak (among the first people to ever receive the honor), and a Jefferson Award for Public Service in the category "Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under" (also known as the ''Samuel S. Beard Award'') in 1987. On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by ''Fortune'' magazine. On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.

In August 2009, Jobs was selected as the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers in a survey by Junior Achievement, having previously been named Entrepreneur of the Decade 20 years earlier in 1989, by ''Inc. magazine''. On November 5, 2009, Jobs was named the CEO of the decade by ''Fortune'' magazine.

In November 2010, Jobs was ranked No.17 on ''Forbes'': The World's Most Powerful People. In December 2010, the ''Financial Times'' named Jobs its person of the year for 2010, ending its essay by stating, "In his autobiography, John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive who once ran Apple, said this of the ambitions of the man he had pushed out: 'Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This was a lunatic plan. High-tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.'". The Financial Times closed by rhetorically asking of this quote, "How wrong can you be."

At the time of his resignation, and again after his death, Jobs was widely described as a visionary, pioneer and genius

Reality distortion field

Apple's Bud Tribble coined the term "reality distortion field" in 1981, to describe Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh project. Tribble claimed that the term came from ''Star Trek''. Since then the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of Jobs' keynote speeches.

The RDF was said by Andy Hertzfeld to be Steve Jobs' ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything, using a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. Although the subject of criticism, Jobs' so-called reality distortion field was also recognized as creating a sense that the impossible was possible. Once the term became widely known, it was often used in the technology press to describe Jobs' sway over the public, particuarly regarding new product announcements.

Portrayals and coverage in books, film, and theater

Books

''The Little Kingdom'' (1984) by Michael Moritz, documenting the founding of (then) Apple Computer.

''The Second Coming of Steve Jobs'' (2001), by Alan Deutschman

''iCon: Steve Jobs'' (2005), by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon

''Steve Jobs'' (2011), an authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson.

''Inside Apple'' (2012), a book by Adam Lashinsky that reveals the secret systems, tactics, and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to work.

Documentaries

''The Machine That Changed the World'' Part 3 of this 1992 five-part documentary, called ''The Paperback Computer'', prominently featured Jobs and his role in the early days of Apple. ''Triumph of the Nerds'' a 1996 three-part documentary for PBS, about the rise of the home computer/personal computer. ''Nerds 2.0.1'' a 1998 three-part documentary for PBS, (and sequel to ''Triumph of the Nerds'') which chronicles the development of the Internet. ''iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World'' a 2011 Discovery Channel documentary hosted by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. ''Steve Jobs: One Last Thing'' a 2011 PBS documentary produced by Pioneer Productions. A slightly shortened and localized version of the show was broadcast in the United Kingdom the following day titled, ''Steve Jobs: iChanged the World'' on Channel 4. In February 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a 191-page file on Steve Jobs. The report was compiled during a 1991 background investigation of Jobs by the FBI after former president George H. W. Bush recommended his appointment to the President's Export Council. It consists of interviews with co-workers, friends, family members and even neighbors of Jobs.

Films

''Pirates of Silicon Valley'' a 1999 TNT film which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. Jobs is portrayed by Noah Wyle.

Theater

''The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs'' - The Public Theater, New York City, 2012, starring Mike Daisey.

References

Further reading

Bantam Doubleday Dell. ISBN 0-385-48684-7. Chapter 28

External links

"Thoughts on Flash" by Steve Jobs, April, 2010.

Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs A 48 minute video on Steve Jobs by Bloomberg

Steve Jobs Profile at ''Forbes''

Steve Jobs remembrance notes from the community. The only remaining tribute on the Apple website..

Federal Bureau of Investigation dossier on Steven Paul Jobs.

Articles

Interviews

Steve Jobs in 1994: The Rolling Stone Interview, ''Rolling Stone'' 1994, republished January 17, 2011. Archived URL April 20, 1995. The Seed of Apple's Innovation, ''BusinessWeek'' October 12, 2004. How Big Can Apple Get?, ''Fortune'' February 21, 2005. ''Newsweek'', October 15, 2006.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (video and transcript of on stage interview), AllThingsD, May 30, 2007.

Videotaped Deposition of Steven P. Jobs in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission, March 18, 2008

Interview with Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, Jobs's biological father, by Mohannad Al-Haj Ali, published in ''Al Hayat'' and reprinted by Ya Libnan, February 28, 2011

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