Dell reported a drop in sales and profits Tuesday as businesses held off buying computers and retail customers preferred iPads to laptops.
The Texas-based PC maker said it earned 635 million dollars in the first quarter, down from $945 million a year earlier. Revenue dropped 4 percent to $14.4 billion, compared to $15 billion last year.
Dell, which is the world's second largest maker of PCs after Hewlett-Packard, also issued a lower than expected revenue forecast for the second quarter of between $14.7 billion and $15 billion, compared to analyst expectations of $15.4 billion.
But the company said that plans to refocus its business from selling PCs to offering businesses end-to-end solutions were going well.
"We're committed to continuing our strategy to re-shape Dell's business as an end-to-end IT provider," said Michael Dell, the company's chairman. "We saw continued progress in our first quarter
with the innovative IT solutions we're providing - notably our latest Dell servers, storage, networking and services that deliver customers enhanced productivity."
