The largest corporate employer in Central Texas, Dell, has to an undisclosed number of workers.
designed to broaden the company鈥檚 enterprise services, a slowing global economy, tough competitors, and a shift from desktop to mobile computing have hammered the Round Rock-based company鈥檚 sales, says industry analyst Shannon Cross.
鈥淲hat hurt them most recently is just a dramatic slowdown in PC sales. Right now there鈥檚 a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace. China slowed dramatically for both HP and Dell in the most recent quarter. You鈥檝e seen a lot of pricing pressure coming from some of the Asian competitors like Lenovo, Asus, and Acer.鈥�
Cross points to the adoption of tablet computing 鈥� lead by Apple鈥檚 iPad 鈥� as 鈥渃annibalizing鈥� traditional PC sales. That applies to both consumer computing and the corporate world, where BYOD 鈥� 鈥渂ring your own device,鈥� as she calls it 鈥� means management is 鈥渂ringing Apple tablets into the corporate networks and then the IT managers are having to learn to deal with it.鈥�
Cross says she thinks that Dell鈥檚 fortunes will improve with in October. 鈥淚f you get the Windows 8 tablets out there 鈥� actually it鈥檚 OK if you don鈥檛 sell a notebook 鈥� you sell a tablet.鈥� Still, Cross notes Windows tablet sales represent 鈥減robably more of a 2013 opportunity for Dell."
But what about Dell employees looking for a new job? Some of them may find a lot of opportunities.
Matt Genovese runs , a computer industry networking group that claims 20,000 members. He says that even outside of hot specialties in software development, like .NET design, java programming, user-interface design and the like 鈥� tech companies are hiring.
鈥淭here are many sales roles and project management roles available. So there is growth in the Austin area,鈥� Genovese says. 鈥淎nd especially in certain types of technology jobs, the tech market still seems like it鈥檚 a viable place to do business and a viable place to find a job. 鈥� I think Austin is very well poised to be a place to find employment, especially on the technology side.鈥�
