Analyst: Black Friday Shoppers Choose HP over Dell by 5:1

Black Friday shoppers chose HP products over Dell products by a wide margin according to Thomas Weisel Partners. The analysts surveyed 35 retail stores during the long weekend.

This isn’t too surprising considering how much shelf space HP has compared to its competition at retail stores like Best Buy and the fact that they sell a wider variety of products than Dell at retail. In addition to notebooks, HP sells printers, printer supplies, monitors, desktops and televisions at some retail locations. I’m not sure what items were counted in the survey, but it’s clear that HP has a clear advantage at retail.

Online however, things didn’t go as planned for HP on Black Friday. Its partnership with Microsoft to provide 40% Cash Back on Black Friday purchases fell flat as Microsoft’s servers crashed and customers weren’t able to access HP.com through the promotional ads and pages. Many received either 0% or 3% Cash Back rather than the proper 40%.

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) — Dell Inc., the world’s second-largest personal-computer maker, lost the Black Friday retail battle against Hewlett-Packard Co. in Best Buy Co. stores, Thomas Weisel Partners said in a report.

Customers preferred Hewlett-Packard PCs 5-to-1 over Dell’s during the three-day weekend, according to a survey of 35 stores conducted by Doug Reid, an analyst at Thomas Weisel. Best Buy is the largest U.S. electronics retailer.

Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell ditched the Round Rock, Texas-based company’s direct-sales-only model in efforts to win back the PC sales lead held by Hewlett-Packard for more than two years. He put Dell products in 20,000 stores worldwide, starting with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Best Buy in the U.S.

“Dell has significant work to do,” New York-based Reid wrote today in the report. “The only negative comments in our survey with respect to brand were aimed at Dell, with survey respondents noting potential quality issues.”

The survey focused on the U.S. consumer market, which Reid estimated accounts for 13 percent of Dell’s revenue. Consumer sales represent about 20 percent of total revenue worldwide.

via Bloomberg