Dell is done. It is on its way down, and will never be a top tier computer manufacturer again. It will end up where Gateway is today.

First, it started selling its computers through WalMart (Google walmart vlasic), and now it has repeatedly delayed its filings.

The death spiral started when they decided to go cheap with their tech support, and people jumped to HP.

Dell delays filing fiscal reports…again
By Kelly Fiveash
Published Friday 6th July 2007 10:36 GMT

Dell will once again hold back filing its 2007 financial statements to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) because it is yet to complete an internal investigation into its accounting practices.

The direct computer giant, which earlier this week confirmed that the SEC had set a mid-July deadline for it to file its fiscal reports, has been looking into accounting errors as well as evidence of misconduct at the firm.

The SEC warned Dell that failure to file reports by 16 July could lead to a delisting on the Nasdaq exchange.

I think that a delisting is unlikely, for now, but things are going to get very bad, very fast.

Note: I do not own Dell stock directly, though they may be a tiny part of my index funds (Vanguard’s S&P 500 fund, etc.)