Rollins on Macs, Michael Dell and more

Will China surpass the US as the dominant technology nation?
In the market it probably could, there's so many people there. Obviously I'm an American so I'm going to feel pretty strongly about the US being able to keep its competitive edge but there are a vast number of people who are very educated, very talented who will compete aggressively. Now for Dell that doesn't have much of an impact because we're going to compete everywhere but that's more of a country-to-country competition.

How important do you think the role of consumer electronics is to Dell's business?
Consumer electronics is a challenging one. It's very interesting, everyone wants to talk about it and right now music, flat panel televisions, a whole host of new handheld devices are fun to talk about and very exciting to look at. Our mindset always says it's not how big the market is but how profitable it can be as the key determiner of whether or not we want to be in it or not.

I think right now the jury is out on where and how much profit is available in the consumer electronics industry because if you look at the current consumer electronics players the biggest ones on the planet struggle to make profit consistently. If they can't make it being very large, sophisticated, entrenched players, what will it look like now that everyone else is getting into this business? It might make it very, very tough.

Do you resent the amount of publicity Apple gets given its market share?
Apple's created a niche. If you look at the grand scheme of things this quarter, we are supposed to achieve something like $13.5bn in revenue. Apple's in the $2.4bn [region] so the size and scale is not even in the same league. But what they do they do very well and they've had great success with the iPod. It's interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it's only this past year it's become a raging success.

Well, those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman -- a rage, everyone had to have one. Well, you don't hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that 'one product wonders' come and go. You have to have sustainable business models, sustainable strategy. But don't read that as any sort of disparagement of Apple. They've done a nice job.