In July, we asked fifteen computer sales locations (Mostly Wal-Mart and Best Buy) to approximate sales trends in Dell computers. The survey asked the following questions.

1. What is the best selling brand and model desktop?

2. Which model series does that brand belong to?

3. What brand of microprocessors does that desktop use?

4. What is the name of this microprocessor in the desktop?

5. What is the speed of the microprocessor?

• Dell was seen as the best selling brand by 44% of the respondents, with 33% of the respondents reporting that HP was the top selling brand.

• The model series that the brand belonged to was said to be Inspiron by 33% of the respondents, also Pavillion was seen to be the top model series by 33% of the respondents too.

• Intel was seen to be the top brand for speed and performance by 53% of the respondents, while 40% of the respondents said AMD was the top brand.

• The Intel Core 2 Duo was seen as the top microprocessor in terms of speed and performance by 20% of the respondents. The AMD Phenom, AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core, Intel Celeron, Intel Pentium Dual Core were all seen as the best microprocessor by 13% of the respondents respectively.

• The microprocessor speeds were said to be 3 GHz or more by 27% of the respondents and 2.4-2.6 GHz by 47% of the respondents. 27% also said that the speeds of the microprocessors were less than 2.3 GHz.

Conclusion of Channel Check: For a time, Dell used to be the largest computer providing company in the world. In 2008, it was the second largest behind HP. Now however, it was seen at the top by 44% of the respondents with HP right behind with 33%. Inspiron was tied with Pavillion for the model series that the brand belonged to. When the questions asked about speed and performance, the best brand was Intel at 60%. 40% reported with AMD chips, which is interesting considering that Dell used to have an Intel only policy, until Alienware was acquired. The speeds were mostly in the 2.4-2.6 GHz range. Overall, Dell still seems to be doing very well in sales beating out HP in our survey.

For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com