It's not a huge surprise to have the CEO of Dell (Kevin Rollins) decrying Apple's business strategy, but in this article in Silicon.com, Rollins shows some interesting "insights" (so to speak) about consumer electronics and the consumer industry.

At one point, he remarks that the iPod is a "one product wonder" (despite the fact that there have already been at least ten different models and five generations) and then goes on to unwisely compare it to the Walkman, about which he says "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."

Wow, the walkman... going to Sony's corporate history page and finding the Walkman History article, you'll see that Sony sold 50 million units of Walkman in the first 10 years, another 50 million in the next three, and another 50 million in the next three years. I'm thinking that Apple would be pretty happy if the iPod sold 150 million units in the next few years... even if that included the new iPod Shuffle.

Rollins goes on to indicate that he doesn't think the Macintosh Mini will help Apple's market share and that Dell, although it has released a downloadable music service and MP3 players, is firmly entrenched in the world of business and institutional computing and plans to continue to concentrate on those areas.