Dell: The iPad is too shiny for biz

CEO Michael Dell is known as the man of big words and bad predictions, the most infamous being his advice from fifteen years ago to give the money back to shareholds and shut down Apple. Fortunately, Dell’s most recent outrageous quote at least hasn’t come out of its CEO’s mouth.

Another exec, Dell Australia’s managing director Joe Kreme, gets the credit for claiming that Apple’s iPad is no fit for big business because it’s too “shiny”. He’s also gone out on a limb to issue a warning to IT managers, saying issues with iOS devices in enterprise can take up to four days to resolve…

The iPad commands a lion’s share of just about every tablet market category, especially in enterprise. That didn’t stop Kreme from criticizing the device without referring to it directly, according to Financial Review:

People might be attracted to some of these shiny devices but technology departments can’t afford to support them.

If you are giving a presentation and something fails on the software side it might take four days to get it up and running again. I don’t think this race has been run yet.

You’d think big companies like Dell would pay attention to market realities before making such outrageous claims.

Dell’s Streak tablet was a dud and spectacularly failed in the marketplace.

Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet and Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad also failed to make a dent and quickly fell by the wayside as iPads became the favorite new toy of IT managers, executives and board members in corporate America.

Dell is now gearing up to re-enter the tablet space with an offering of Windows 8 tablets in the hope it will steal market share from Apple.

I guess we’ll just see how the competition goes, no?