Dell plans $3 billion in cuts

April Fool’s Day is a bad day to announce a major strat­egy shift. Case in point: Dell announced today that the com­pany will slash US$3 bil­lion in costs over the next 3 years, accord­ing to PC World via Yahoo and Engad­get. This includes elim­i­nat­ing 5600 jobs on top of an pre­vi­ously announced cut of 3200 positions.

Dell will also close a desk­top com­puter man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in its head­quar­ters city of Austin, which accounts for 900 of the lost jobs accord­ing to the Austin American-Statesman. Desk­top com­puter sales con­tinue to flag while Dell shipped 37% more porta­bles dur­ing the fis­cal year.

Dell Finan­cial Ser­vices may be sold or spun off. DFS pro­vides con­sumer and busi­ness financ­ing for com­puter hard­ware and soft­ware sold through Dell’s direct sales channels.

Dell is prepar­ing ahead, as com­puter hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers tend to lead the econ­omy out of recessions.

Tagged as: Dell, economy, management, recession, revenue