Amid need to diversify, Dell’s PC business still grows

The portion of total revenue generated by personal computers at Dell Inc. has risen 10 percentage points in the past year even as the company is looking to diversify beyond the slumping PC market.

In fiscal 2016, Dell reported generating 65 percent of its revenue from PCs compared with 55 percent in fiscal 2011. The Round Rock company’s client solutions business unit, which is mostly desktop and laptop computers, reported producing 68 percent of Dell’s net revenue during both fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The trend demonstrates the difficulty for a company as large and established as Dell to quickly shift its product mix. It’s also a factor that the impending $67 billion acquisition of EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) is bound to affect