Dell closes U.S kiosks, goes the Wal-Mart route
If you’ve gotten used to the Dell kiosks you’ve seen around the U.S., get used to seeing them gone. In what analysts see as a move to play catchup to HP, Dell is getting rid of the kiosks and concentrating on bigger chains like Wal-Mart instead.
Dell sees this move as part of its effort to focus on its Dell Direct Store model. “Moving into retail is a prime example of Dell listening to its customers,” said Tony Weiss, vice president for Dell’s Global Consumer business. Dell computers are now available in over 10,000 retail stores worldwide and strategy-wise, that giving them a bigger reach than mall kiosks could probably offer.
Besides Wal-Mart, Dell also has retail arrangements at Best Buy and Staples in the U.S. 
with Wal-Mart also selling Dell in countries like Brazil, Canada and Mexico. Among the other places that Dell’s tapped into via the retail store means are Singapore, the United Kingdom and countries in Europe.
Now that they’re firmly ensconced in retail and going for the widest reach of customer, what else can we expect from Dell? With the runaway popularity of Asus’s Linux-based EEE PC and Everex’s success at selling laptops as cheap as US$199, Dell will likely keep going with the Linux trend. As of now, only 39 percent of new PCs are shipped with Microsoft’s Vista compared to 67 percent for XP when it came out in 2002 (says InformationWeek.com, according to data from Microsoft and Gartner). HP is currently the largest PC producer and for Dell to play catchup, they will need the numbers and right now the masses seem to be clamouring for cheap PCs.
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