Head of Dell's EMEA operations Peter Bell tells Karlin Lillington that company plans to open  anufacturing facilities in China and India do not threaten its Irish facilities

European union policies could prove a barrier to further investment by companies like Dell in Ireland, Peter Bell, president of Dell's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), operations has warned.

Government policies present no such worries, he told The Irish Times, noting that Dell finds Ireland "stable" and has "no real concerns" about the economic or policy landscape here.

Bell also said Dell did not see any reason to worry about a potential change of government after the next general election, especially as the company feels it has a good relationship with IDA Ireland as well as the government generally.

"But there are always ideas floated in EU legislation that are more negative," he says. If they became directives requiring enactment here, such policies could give cause for concern.

He also says Dell - which has recently announced that major new manufacturing facilities are going into China and India - was not creating such facilities to move manufacturing to lower-cost economies but to supply Asian markets directly.

India and Asia are two of Dell's fastest growing markets, with a 40 per cent increase in shipments last year to China and a 29 per cent growth there in revenue, Bell says. Dell prefers to keep manufacturing close to each market, which is why Irish operations were not threatened by new facilities in these regions, he says.

Top growth markets for Dell are China, India, Brazil and Eastern Europe, which are all giving the company some cause for celebration.

Dell has recently been battered in the US and European markets after first-quarter results released in late May revealed revenue had declined to $762 million (€595 million), or 33 US cents per share, from $934 million, or 37 cents per share, a year earlier. In its key US market, Dell only grew PC shipments by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter, when the overall US market grew by 7.4 per cent, lowering market share from 32 per cent to 29.8 per cent. It has been losing ground to rivals such as HP, Lenovo and Acer.

Is it time to rethink the famous Dell model? "We're never not tweaking it, and not adapting it," argues Bell. "Customer needs change rapidly, and technology changes rapidly."

Shrugging off more recent performance, he notes the company has doubled in size in the past five years and vastly increased the depth and breadth of its product range. "Probably half of what we offer, we only offered in the past five years," he says, pointing to new ranges such as its printer line and service offerings. "But we always need to work out how we will provide [ new offerings] with our model."

Are there lines the company would consider modifying or cutting? The one-time manufacturer purely of PCs now offers servers, storage, handhelds, printers, televisions, and a range of new services in its line-up. "We are certainly happy with our broad categories," Bell says.

One focus for Dell is to determine how best to provide its range of products and services to the business and home customer, its two distinct markets. One shift is a major revamp of Dell's online environment, Bell says, noting the company is instituting "creative and clever ways" to provide tech support online, simplify the user experience, and add functionality so that people are able to see and understand Dell's products.

Another trial approach for the company is to open a small number of Dell stores in the US - one of the few markets, along with Japan and the UK, where Dell sells high volumes to consumers as well as businesses - so that customers can go and physically see the products it sells online and speak to Dell salespeople - especially handhelds and televisions that customers prefer to see first-hand.

Worldwide, businesses account for 85 per cent of sales, and a store environment will not matter to that market, he says, but in the US, the split is 65 per cent business, 35 per cent consumer.

Dell has operated small "kiosk" environments to accomplish a direct interaction with consumers in the past, and critics have wondered what purpose the larger stores will serve - especially as buyers still cannot take home a PC or television, but must go back and order online.

Bell defends retaining the Dell sales model of "sell, then build" even for the stores. "When we came in and developed that model in the first place, people said it wouldn't work, but it has. There are plenty of other advantages - especially, a high degree of personalisation - with selling online and building to order."

In addition, many people don't want to lug a large item like a PC home - they would rather have it delivered, he says.

Dell may face much bigger challenges, however, than deciding the best ways to address its market. Some commentators have wondered whether the end of the Dell model era - that of building electronics by aggregating parts bought in bulk at steep discounts, to bring savings and good specifications to buyers - is nigh.

The Wall Street Journal's veteran technology columnist Walt Mossberg, for example, believes PCs built in this way are going so low in price (down to a few hundred dollars in Asia) that they are becoming ultra-cheap commodities. As the end of Moore's famous law is reached and chips have just about all the transistors squeezed onto them as is physically possible, Mossberg believes buyers may switch to valuing "closed system" computers built with proprietary parts and running on proprietary software because they offer a more integrated, simple and rich media experience.

"Over time, the open ecosystem has always won out over the closed ecosystem," Bell counters. He also says the combined R&D spend of the many open ecosystem companies and sectors - from big technology companies to open source projects like operating system Linux - is around $20 billion, far in excess of any single closed ecosystem company, such as Apple.

"Lower costs and increased efficiencies mean the overall PC industry has grown and more people can now afford a computer.

"And even though the price is going down, the average household is spending more on technology," one of the reasons Dell has diversified into other products, he says, especially the domain of the "digital home".

"That continual process is one reason why we have a dynamic, growing IT industry."

And the prospect of people wanting more digital stuff in their homes and as tools at work means Dell retains a rosy outlook in what Bell readily acknowledges is a "hypercompetitive" market.

"The thing is, it's a difficult market. But it is also very dynamic and challenging."