Cramer's TheStreet.com TV
TheStreet.com TV Recap: Can't Compare Apples to Dells
TheStreet.com Staff
03/30/07 - 02:01 PM EDT
The return of Michael Dell to his namesake company can't be compared to Steve Jobs' return to Apple(AAPL), Jim Cramer said on TheStreet.com TV's Wall Street Confidential Web video Friday.
"Jobs is a creative force," he told Gregg Greenberg, the host of Wall St. Confidential. "Dell is an efficiency of time and implementation and equipment force -- an operations guy."
Cramer said he fails to see how Dell(DELL) is going to be able to maintain margins, especially with increased competition from Acer and Lenovo, two growing names in the PC market. (Dell was in the news yesterday when it announced it had discovered some accounting irregularities.
"I have not been on the bandwagon that you have to buy Dell now that Michael Dell is back," he said. "And I was on the bandwagon that you have to buy Apple because Apple is a fashion play and you are able to charge a lot of money if you have a fashionable product."
Although some might consider fashion to be "faddish," it is not so in Apple's case, Cramer continued. And for those who believe the looks of a product don't matter in technology, he pointed out Microsoft's (MSFT) Zune, which has not been competing well against the iPod and which Cramer called "really ugly."
"Dell is really a play on gross margins," and Cramer said he doesn't believe it can reignite margins. Further, Cramer said the accounting scandals at Dell have always been an irritation to him.
While Cramer tends not to look at the options-backdating as being very meaningful, some of the people at Dell have no clue what they have earned, and "Dell is one of those," Cramer said.
"I would say Michael might be able to keep gross margins a little higher because he does have a lot of good operation skill," he said. "But I don't think it matters because the PC business is not a good business anymore."
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