American corporation Dell has posted a quarterly drop in profits (from July to September) by 47% over the same quarter in 2011. In monetary terms, Dell made a profit of $475 million in the 3rd quarter of 2012, but made $893 million for the 3rd quarter of 2011.
Dell has been facing stiff competition in recent times, from highly evolved smartphones such as the Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III and the ever encroaching tablet market led by devices such as the Apple iPad with Retina Display ("iPad 4"), Amazon Kindle Fire and the Asus Transformer Series. Dell's own tablet range, such as the XPS 10 Tablet (up to Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz DC processor and 64GB flash storage, $779.99) seeks to climb to the top of the tablet pile.
To counter the increasingly competitive market Dell has added devices such as the XPS 12 Convertible Touch Ultrabook to its portfolio. Designed with Windows 8 in mind, this touchscreen laptop can sport up to an i7-3517U processor with Intel HD 4000, 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD for the stately sum of $1699.
Dell has been championing the latest Microsoft OS in its online store, offering its wide range of computers frequently bundled with Windows 8. However, it remains to be seen what else Dell will try to do to boost profits and counter competitors such as Lenovo and HP over the Christmas period.