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Rahat Fateh Ali Khan (born December 9, 1973) is a Pakistani singer, primarily of Qawwali, a devotional music of the Muslim Sufis. He is the nephew of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and son of Ustad Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan and also the grandson of legendary Qawwali singer Fateh Ali Khan.In addition to Qawwali, he also performs ghazals and other light music. He is popular as a Bollywood and Lollywood playback singer.

Early life

Rahat was born into a family of Qawwals and classical singers in Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistaninto a family of traditional musicians. The son of Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan, he was trained by his uncle Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in the art of classical music and Qawwali.
Career
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan at SAMAA.

Rahat was chosen by his uncle Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for tutoring in the traditions of Qawwalimusic and was precociusly singing with his uncle and father by the age of three.[5] At the age of seven he began formal training with his uncle and he performed first time in public at the age of nine at the death anniversary of his grandfather. From age fifteen, he was made an integral part of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's qawwali group which was famous throughout the world. He toured the UK with his uncle in 1985, and performed solo songs in addition to singing with the Qawwali group.At a concert in Birmingham on 27 July 1985, he performed the solo ghazal, Mukh Tera Sohneya Sharab Nalon Changa Ae. At a concert at the Harrow Leisure Centre in 1985, he performed the solo song, Gin Gin Taare Lang Gaiyaan Rattaan. He sang lollywood playback in the 90s and debuted as a playback singer in Bollywood with the movie Paap (2004), featuring the hit song, Mann Ki Lagan. His recent works include Pakistani nationalistic songs such as Dharti Dharti and Hum Pakistan, and songs from Bollywood films. He has toured extensively and performed in Pakistan, United Kingdom and all around the world. In April 2012 Rahat toured in the UK, performing at Wembley Arena and the Manchester Arena, playing to a combined audience of over 20,000 people.
Soundtracks and collaboration

In a subordinate role with his uncle Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, working in collaboration with Eddie Vedder, of the American rock band, Pearl Jam, Rahat contributed to the soundtrack of the 1995 Hollywood film, Dead Man Walking. In 2002, he worked on the soundtrack of The Four Feathers in collaboration with the American composer of orchestral and film music, James Horner.In 2002, Rahat guested with The Derek Trucks Band on the song Maki Madni for Trucks' album, Joyful Noise. In 2011, his vocals were featured on the soundtrack of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.
Television

He judged the show, Chhote Ustaad 2 alongside Sonu Nigam. He was also one of the judges on the singing reality show Junoon – Kuchh Kar Dikhaane Ka, premièred on NDTV Imagine in 2008.
Nobel Peace Prize Concert

Rahat became the first Pakistani to be invited at 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, to perform at its concert.He performed Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's most memorable qawwali "Tumhe Dillagi..." and "Mast Qalandar...", he also sang "Aao Parhao – Jo Seekha hai woh sab ko seekhao" (Come Teach – Teach all that you have learnt).
Awards

    In 2014, he won "Best Song of the Year" for Main Hoon Shahid Afridi at the 13th Lux Style Awards
    In 2014, he won "Best Singer Male" for Zinda Bhaag at the 1st ARY Film Awards
    In 2013, he won "Award for Best Singer Male" at the 4th Pakistan Media Awards
    In 2012, he won "International Artist of the Decade" at the UK Asian Music Awards
    In 2012, he won "Best International Act" at the UK Asian Music Awards
    In 2012, he won "Best Selling Download" at the UK Asian Music Awards for the song Teri Meri from the film Bodyguard
    In 2012, he won "Award for Best Music Talent in a Film" at the 14th London Asian Film Festival for the song Koi Dil Mein from the feature film Tamanna.
    In 2011, he won "Award for Best Male Playback Singer" at the Filmfare Awards.
    In 2011, he won "Award for Best Singer Male" at the Pakistan Media Awards.
    In 2011, he won "Award for Best Male Playback" at the Screen Awards.
    In 2010, he won "Award for Best Male Playback" at the Screen Awards.
    In 2010, he won "Best International Act" at the UK Asian Music Awards (UK AMAs).
    In 2008, he won "POPULAR CHOICE AWARDS:Best Asian Concert" at Masala Lifestyle Awards.
    In 2008, He won Best Sound Track Award for 'Bharday Jholi' on The Musik Awards.

Justin Drew Bieber (/ˈbiːbər/; born March 1, 1994)is a Canadian singer and songwriter. Bieber's current manager, Scooter Braun first discovered him through his YouTube videos in 2007.Braun was impressed with the videos, and contacted Bieber's mother Pattie about wanting to work with him. Having convinced Bieber's mother, Braun arranged for Bieber to meet with Usher in Atlanta, Georgia. Bieber was signed to RBMG,and then to an Island Records recording contract offered by record executive, L.A. Reid.

Bieber released his debut EP, My World, in November 2009. It was certified platinum in the United States. He became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut record to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.Bieber released his first full-length studio album, My World 2.0, in March 2010. It debuted at or near number one in several countries and was certified platinum in the United States. It was preceded by the single "Baby", which is also, as of July 2014, the YouTube video with the most dislikes, and the most views on a Vevo platform. He followed up the release of his debut album with his first headlining tour, the My World Tour, the remix albums My Worlds Acoustic and Never Say Never – The Remixes, and the 3D biopic-concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. Bieber released his second studio album Under the Mistletoe in November 2011, when it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Bieber released his third studio album Believe in June 2012. It became his fourth chart topper in the United States, debuting at number-one on the Billboard 200.

Bieber has received numerous industry awards, including both Artist of the Year Awards, at the 2010 American Music Awards, and the 2012 American Music Awards, and was nominated for Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 53rd Grammy Awards. With a global fan base, termed as "Beliebers", and over 40 million followers on Twitter, Bieber was thrice named by Forbes magazine as one of the top ten most powerful celebrities in the world, ranking third in both 2011 and 2012,and ranking ninth in 2013.

Life and career
1994–2007: Early life

Bieber was born on March 1, 1994, in London, Ontario, at St Joseph's Hospital,and was raised in Stratford, Ontario.He is the only child of Jeremy Jack Bieber and Patricia "Pattie" Mallette. Bieber's parents were never married.Pattie raised her son with the help of her mother, Diane, and stepfather, Bruce.His mother is of French-Canadian descent; his paternal great-grandfather was of German ancestry, and his other roots are English and Irish.He has stated that he believes that he has some undetermined Aboriginal Canadian ancestry.

Through Jeremy, Bieber has two younger half-siblings, Jasmyn (born 2009) and Jaxon (born 2010).Pattie worked a series of low-paying office jobs, raising Bieber as a single mother in low-income housing. Bieber has maintained contact with his father.

Bieber attended a French-language immersion elementary school in Stratford, the Jeanne Sauvé Catholic School.Growing up, he learned to play the piano, drums, guitar, and trumpet.In early 2007, aged 12, Bieber sang Ne-Yo's "So Sick" for a local singing competition in Stratford and was placed second.Mallette posted a video of the performance on YouTube for their family and friends to see. She continued to upload videos of Bieber singing covers of various R&B songs, and Bieber's popularity on the site grew.
2008–10: Career beginnings and My World

While searching for videos of a different singer, Scooter Braun, a former marketing executive of So So Def, clicked on one of Bieber's 2007 videos by accident.Impressed, Braun tracked down the theater Bieber was performing in, located Bieber's school, and finally contacted Mallette, who was reluctant because of Braun's Judaism. She remembered praying, "God, I gave him to you. You could send me a Christian man, a Christian label!" and "God, you don't want this Jewish kid to be Justin's man, do you?" However, church elders convinced her to let Bieber go with Braun. At 13, Bieber went to Atlanta, Georgia, with Braun to record demo tapes.Bieber began singing for Usher one week later.

Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group a joint venture between Braun and Usher.Justin Timberlake was also reportedly in the running to sign Bieber, but lost the bidding war to Usher.Usher then sought assistance in finding a label home for the artist from then manager Chris Hicks, who helped engineer an audition with his contact L.A. Reid of The Island Def Jam Music Group.Reid signed Bieber to Island Records in October 2008 (resulting in a joint venture between RBMG and Island Records) and appointed Hicks as executive Vice-President of Def Jam where he would be able to manage Bieber's career at the Bieber then moved to Atlanta with his mother to pursue further work with Braun and Usher.Braun became Bieber's manager in 2008.

Bieber's first single, "One Time", was released to radio while Bieber was still recording his debut album.The song reached number 12 on the Canadian Hot 100 during its first week of release in July 2009,and later peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. During fall 2009, it had success in international markets.The song was certified Platinum in Canada and the US and Gold in Australia and New Zealand.His first release, an extended play entitled My World, was released on November 17, 2009. The album's second single, "One Less Lonely Girl", and two promo singles, "Love Me", and "Favorite Girl", were released exclusively on the iTunes Store and charted within the top forty of the Billboard Hot 100.

"One Less Lonely Girl" was later also released to radio and peaked within the top fifteen in Canada and the US, being certified Gold in the latter.My World was eventually certified Platinum in the US and Double Platinum in both Canada and the United Kingdom.To promote the album, Bieber performed on several live shows such as mtvU's VMA 09 Tour, European program The Dome, YTV's The Next Star, The Today Show,The Wendy Williams Show, Lopez Tonight, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, It's On with Alexa Chung, Good Morning America, Chelsea Lately, and BET's 106 & Park with Rihanna. Bieber also guest starred in an episode of True Jackson, VP in late 2009.

Bieber performed Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" for U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House for Christmas in Washington, which was broadcast on December 20, 2009, on US television broadcaster TNT.Bieber was also one of the performers at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest on December 31, 2009.Bieber was a presenter at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards on January 31, 2010. He was invited to be a vocalist for the remake of "We Are the World" (a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie) for its 25th anniversary to benefit Haiti after the earthquake. Bieber sings the opening line, which was sung by Lionel Richie in the original version.

On March 12, 2010, a version of K'naan's "Wavin' Flag" recorded by a collective of Canadian musicians known as Young Artists for Haiti was released. Bieber is featured in the song, performing the closing lines.

History

Early history and development

In 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera (Nopal field), named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished. The area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains immediately to the north.

The name "Hollywood" was coined by H. J. Whitley, the "Father of Hollywood".The name is a reference to the Toyon, a native plant with bright red winter berries that resemble holly.Originally the name "Figwood" was to be used to name the area due to the surrounding number of fig trees. Whitley arranged to buy the 500-acre E.C. Hurd ranch and disclosed to him his plans for the land. They agreed on a price and Hurd agreed to sell at a later date. Before Whitley got off the ground with Hollywood, plans for the new town had spread to General Harrison Gray Otis, Hurd's wife, eastern adjacent ranch co-owner Daeida Wilcox, and others.

An alternate derivation for the name comes from histories on Hollywood, Illinois (now part of Brookfield, IL) and Hollywood, Florida. Mrs. Wilcox was said to have met a woman on a train trip to the East. The woman told Mrs. Wilcox about her lovely ranch in Hollywood, Illinois. Mrs. Wilcox was said to be so enamored of the name that she appropriated it for the property she and her husband Harvey were planning in the Cahuenga Valley, as it was then known. Further research yielded that a parcel of land in Illinois was, in fact named Hollywood and was owned by John D. Rockefeller and his wife, Laura. When their fourth daughter Edith married Harold McCormick, heir to the farming equipment fortune in 1895, John D. and Laura Rockefeller gifted the ranch to her. The lower part of the area known as Hollywood was purchased by a Samuel Gross in 1893 who subdivided the property for housing and development. Mrs. McCormick donated her parcel of Hollywood to the Cook County Forest Preserve District for development as a zoological garden in 1919 and it is now the Brookfield Zoo. Often this story is repeated as Mrs. Wilcox having met Mrs. McCormick, but as the Wilcoxes filed the name with the City of Los Angeles in 1887. when Mrs. McCormick was but 15, the woman Mrs. Wilcox met was her mother, Mrs. Rockefeller, who owned the property with her husband, John D. Rockefeller.,
Glen-Holly Hotel, first hotel in Hollywood, at the corner of what is now Yucca Street. It was built in the 1890s.

Daeida Wilcox may have learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon (now Lake Hollywood) and a prominent investor and friend of Whitley's.She recommended the same name to her husband, Harvey. H. Wilcox. On February 1, 1887, Wilcox filed a deed and map of property he sold with the Los Angeles County Recorder's office, named "Hollywood, California." Wilcox wanted to be the first to record it on a deed. The early real-estate boom busted that same year, yet Hollywood began its slow growth.

By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper, hotel, and two markets. Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479[13] lay 10 miles (16 km) east through the vineyards, barley fields, and citrus groves. A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent and the trip took two hours. The old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood.

Daeida Wilcox Beveridge, the "Mother of Hollywood," gave three lots to the painter Paul de Longpré at Cahuenga Boulevard and Prospect Avenue (Hollywood Boulevard), for cultural enhancement of the town.His extensive flower gardens and mansion with public art gallery became an early tourist attraction in Los Angeles.
Hollywood Hotel, 1905
The intersection of Hollywood and Highland, 1907
Newspaper advertisement for Hollywood land sales, 1908

The Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley, president of the Los Pacific Boulevard and Development Company. Having finally acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, which, still a dusty, unpaved road, was regularly graded and graveled. The hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years.

Whitley's company developed and sold one of the early residential areas, the Ocean View Tract.Whitley did much to promote the area. He paid thousands of dollars for electric lighting, including bringing electricity and building a bank, as well as a road into the Cahuenga Pass. The lighting ran for several blocks down Prospect Avenue. Whitley's land was centered on Highland Avenue.
Incorporation and merger

Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality on November 14, 1903, by a vote of 88 for and 77 against. On January 30, 1904, the voters in Hollywood decided, by a vote of 113 to 96, for the banishment of liquor in the city, except when it was being sold for medicinal purposes. Neither hotels nor restaurants were allowed to serve wine or liquor before or after meals.

In 1910, the city voted for merger with Los Angeles in order to secure an adequate water supply and to gain access to the L.A. sewer system. With annexation, the name of Prospect Avenue changed to Hollywood Boulevard and all the street numbers in the new district changed.
Motion picture industry
Main article: Cinema of the United States
Nestor Studio, Hollywood's first movie studio, 1912

By 1912, major motion-picture companies had set up production near or in Los Angeles.In the early 1900s, most motion picture patents were held by Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company in New Jersey, and filmmakers were often sued to stop their productions. To escape this, filmmakers began moving out west, where Edison's patents could not be enforced.Also, the weather was ideal and there was quick access to various settings. Los Angeles became the capital of the film industry.
Hollywood movie studios, 1922

Director D. W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood. His 17-minute short film In Old California, was filmed for the Biograph Company.Although Hollywood banned movie theaters—of which it had none—before annexation that year, Los Angeles had no such restriction.The first film by a Hollywood studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company, was shot on October 26, 1911.The Whitley home was used as its set, and the unnamed movie was filmed in the middle of their groves at the corner of Whitley Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard.

The first studio in Hollywood, the Nestor Company, was established by the New Jersey–based Centaur Company in a roadhouse at 6121 Sunset Boulevard (the corner of Gower), in October 1911.Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO, and Columbia – had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. In the 1920s, Hollywood was the fifth largest industry in the nation.

Hollywood became known as Tinseltownand Movie Biz City because of the glittering image of the movie industry. Hollywood has since become a major center for film study in the United States.

http://www.tensports.com/TEN Sports is Asia's leading sports network operating five sports channels – TEN Sports, TEN Cricket, TEN Action, TEN Golf and TEN HD.

Ten Sports own long term broadcast rights for five cricket boards – South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, offering its viewers the best of sports action round the clock.

Channel brings to sports buffs a continuous dose of varied sports including WWE, US Open, ATP Tournaments, WTA, Ryder Cup, Moto GP, Euro league, PGA Championship,Asian Tour, European Tour and Tour De France. It also telecasts the world's best football action from the top leagues like the UEFA champions League, Spanish Super Cup, UEFA Super Cup, French League, Capital One Cup, German Cup along with major football club television programming thus promising the best in International Football.

Established in April 2002, Ten Sports (TAJ Television) is owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited and is available across the world directly and or through partner channels. Through its strong presence worldwide, ZEEL entertains over 670+ million viewers across 169 countries.

The company was launched in the UAE as Taj Television by Emirati promoter Abdul Rehman Bukhatir along with a management team of CEO Chris McDonald, Zahid Noorani, Peter Hutton, Steve Norris, Mark Denton and Nikhil Diwadkar. Following the acquisition of broadcast rights to the 2002 FIFA World Cup, WWE, Formula 1, UEFA Champions League football and FIH World hockey, the "Ten Sports" channel operated by Taj Television became established as the most watched sports channel on Indian and Pakistani television. The business was sold to Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited in 2010 for a reported figure of 100 million USD. Taj TV also operated the Cricket Plus channel in North America, Goal TV in Asia, ASN in Asia, the Football Channel in Singapore and Showtime Sports in the Middle East during the period from 2004 to 2010.

Ten Sports

TEN SPORTS broadcasts the US Open, WTA, Chennai Open, FIH (Field Hockey), Tour de France, Athletics World Championship, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games. TEN SPORTS also telecast ATP, Moto GP, EFLI (American Football), Rallying, Horse Racing and Beach Volleyball events. WWE have extended their broadcasting deal with TEN Sports, who will show live WWE RAW and same day monthly WWE PPVs in India starting in January 2015,and add WWE Main Event show on ten sports network
Ten Cricket

TEN CRICKET televises cricket action from 5 International Cricketing Boards– West Indies, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Apart from the 5 cricket boards the Ten Cricket has various other cricket properties – ICC Cricket World, Homes of Cricket, Simply the Best etc. which ensure year round viewership for the channel.
Ten Action

TEN ACTION is India’s first football centric channel.

TEN ACTION broadcasts the best of football matches of the most revered leagues from around the world –UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Super Cup, Spanish Super Cup, Copa Del Rey, I-League, Federation Cup, Coppa Italia, French League, Capital One Cup, Sky Bet Championship, German Cup, Brazilian League and Major League Soccer all year round.

Well known and experienced Football panelists from across the world share their insights on the upcoming live matches, football industry updates on the channel on its show Countdown 2 kick off.
Ten HD

TenHD is 24x7 HD channel, showcase exciting sports action in High definition from its stellar line-up of Live Premier international sporting events including Cricket, football, tennis and motor sports among others. Also WWE raw live and monthly ppv specials same day and WWE's weekly show Main Event in India in high definition starting from january 2015
Ten Golf

TEN GOLF is India's first 24 hours dedicated Golf channel. TEN GOLF has the Broadcasting rights to the European Tour, Asian Tour, Ryder Cup, LPGA Tour,Royal Trophy, 95th US PGA Championship, 74th Senior PGA Championship, Professional Golf Tour of India & Ladies European Tour rights. Ten Golf brings to India the Golf Channel Block featuring a range of Golf programming content.

http://www.bbc.com/The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a UK-based international public-service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London.

It is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, with around 23,000

The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parli and used to fund the BBC's extensive radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. From 1 April 2014 it also funds the BBC World Service, which provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic, and Persian, and broadcasts in 28 languages.

Around a quarter of BBC revenues come from its commercial arm BBC Worldwide Ltd. which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and also distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English language news services BBC World News and BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd.

History
Further information: Timeline of the BBC
The birth of British Broadcasting 1920 – 1922

Britain's first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mail's Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba. The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio However this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By the Autumn of 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licencing authority, the General Post Office was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts.

But by 1922 the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3000 members.Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in the United Statesthe GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufactures, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the Company made its first official broadcast.The Company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers and by a licence fee.
From private Company to Public Service Corporation – 1923 to 1926

The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate. Set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets.[18] By mid 1923 discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee. The Committee recommended a short term reorganisation of licence fees with improved enforcement in order to address the BBC's immediate financial distress, and an increased share of the licence revenue split between it and the GPO. This was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBC's broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, as was the prohibition on advertising. The BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 7pm, and required to source all news from external wire services.

Mid 1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration this time by the Crawford committee. By now the BBC under Reith's exceptional leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified (monopoly) broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a public service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 General Strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the primary source of news for the duration of the crisis.

The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position. On one hand Reith was acutely aware that the Government might exercise its right to commandeer the BBC at any time as a mouthpiece of the Government if the BBC were to step out of line, but on the other he was anxious to maintain public trust by appearing to be acting independently. The Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PM's own. Thus the BBC was granted sufficient leeway to pursue the Government's objectives largely in a manner of its own choosing. The resulting coverage of both Striker and Government viewpoints impressed millions of listeners who were unaware that the PM had broadcast to the nation from Reith's home, using one of Reith's sound bites inserted at the last moment, or that the BBC had banned broadcasts from the Labour Party and delayed a peace appeal by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Supporters of the Strike nicknamed the BBC the BFC for British Falsehood Company. Reith personally announced the end of the strike which he marked by reciting from Blake's "Jerusalem" signifying that England had been saved.

The BBC did well out of the crisis which cemented a national audience for its broadcasting and was followed by the Government's official acceptance of the Crawford Committee recommendations transferring the operations of the Company to a British Broadcasting Corporation established by Royal Charter. Reith was knighted and on 1 January 1927 becoming the first Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

While the BBC tends to characterise its coverage of the General Strike by emphasising the positive impression created by its balanced coverage of the views of Government and Strikers, Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History and the Official BBC Historian has characterised the episode as the invention of "modern propaganda in its British form".Reith argued that trust gained by 'authentic impartial news' could then be used. Impartial news was not necessarily an end in itself.

To represent its purpose and (stated) values, the Corporation adopted the coat of arms, including the motto "Nation shall speak peace unto Nation". The motto is generally attributed to Montague John Rendall, former headmaster of Winchester College and member of the first BBC Board of Governors.The motto is said to be a "felicitous adaptation" of Micah 4: 3 "nation shall not lift up a sword against nation".
1926 to 1939

The success of "wireless" broadcasting provoked animosities between the BBC and well established media such as theatres, concert halls and the recording industry. By 1929 the BBC complained that the agents of many London comedians refused to sign contracts for broadcasting, because they feared it harmed the artist "by making his material stale" and that it "reduces the value of the artist as a visible music-hall performer". On the other hand the BBC was "keenly interested" in a cooperation with the recording companies who "in recent years ... have not been slow to make records of singers, orchestras, dance bands, etc. who have already proved their power to achieve popularity by wireless." Radio plays were so popular that the BBC had received 6,000 manuscripts by 1929, most of them written for stage and of little value for broadcasting: "Day in and day out, manuscripts come in, and nearly all go out again through the post, with a note saying 'We regret,

Experimental television broadcasts were started in 1932 using an electromechanical 30-line system developed by John Logie Baird. Limited regular broadcasts using this system began in 1934, and an expanded service (now named the BBC Television Service) started from Alexandra Palace in 1936, alternating between an improved Baird mechanical 240 line system and the all electronic 405 line Marconi-EMI system. The superiority of the electronic system saw the mechanical system dropped early the following year.
1939 to 2000

Television broadcasting was suspended from 1 September 1939 to 7 June 1946 during the Second World War. There was a widely reported urban myth that, upon resumption of service, announcer Leslie Mitchell started by saying, "As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted ..." In fact, the first person to appear when transmission resumed was Jasmine Bligh and the words said were "Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh ...

The European Broadcasting Union was formed on 12 February 1950, in Torquay with the BBC among the 23 founding broadcasting organisations.
BBC Television Centre at White City, West London, which opened in 1960 and closed in 2013

Competition to the BBC was introduced in 1955 with the commercial and independently operated television network of ITV. However, the BBC monopoly on radio services would persist into the 1970s. As a result of the Pilkington Committee report of 1962, in which the BBC was praised for the quality and range of its output, and ITV was very heavily criticised for not providing enough quality programming,the decision was taken to award the BBC a second television channel, BBC2, in 1964, renaming the existing service BBC1. BBC2 used the higher resolution 625 line standard which had been standardised across Europe. BBC2 was broadcast in colour from 1 July 1967, and was joined by BBC1 and ITV on 15 November 1969. The 405 line VHF transmissions of BBC1 (and ITV) were continued for compatibility with older television receivers until 1985.

Starting in 1964, a series of pirate radio stations (starting with Radio Caroline) came on the air and forced the British government finally to regulate radio services to permit nationally based advertising-financed services. In response, the BBC reorganised and renamed their radio channels. The Light Programme was split into Radio 1 offering continuous "Popular" music and Radio 2 more "Easy Listening".The "Third" programme became Radio 3 offering classical music and cultural programming. The Home Service became Radio 4 offering news, and non-musical content such as quiz shows, readings, dramas and plays. As well as the four national channels, a series of local BBC radio stations were established in 1967, including Radio London.

In 1969, the BBC Enterprises department was formed to exploit BBC brands and programmes for commercial spin-off products. In 1979 it became a wholly owned limited company, BBC Enterprises Ltd.

In 1974, the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax, was introduced, created initially to provide subtitling, but developed into a news and information service. In 1978, BBC staff went on strike just before the Christmas of that year, thus blocking out the transmission of both channels and amalgamating all four radio stations into one.

Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the 1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector (and from the advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4), especially on satellite television, cable television, and digital television services.[citation needed]

In the late 1980s, the BBC began a process of divestment by spinning off and selling parts of its organisation. In 1988 it sold off the Hulton Press Library, a photographic archive which had been acquired from the Picture Post magazine by the BBC in 1957. The archive was sold to Brian Deutsch and is now owned by Getty Images. During the 1990s, this process continued with the separation of certain operational arms of the corporation into autonomous but wholly owned subsidiaries of the BBC, with the aim of generating additional revenue for programme-making. BBC Enterprises was reorganised and relaunched in 1995 as BBC Worldwide Ltd. In 1998, BBC studios, outside broadcasts, post production, design, costumes and wigs were spun off into BBC Resources Ltd.

The BBC Research Department has played a major part in the development of broadcasting and recording techniques. In the early days, it carried out essential research into acoustics and programme level and noise measurement.[citation needed] The BBC was also responsible for the development of the NICAM stereo standard.

In recent decades, a number of additional channels and radio stations have been launched: Radio 5 was launched in 1990 as a sports and educational station, but was replaced in 1994 with Radio 5 Live, following the success of the Radio 4 service to cover the 1991 Gulf War. The new station would be a news and sport station. In 1997, BBC News 24, a rolling news channel, launched on digital television services and the following year, BBC Choice launched as the third general entertainment channel from the BBC. The BBC also purchased The Parliamentary Channel, which was renamed BBC Parliament. In 1999, BBC Knowledge launched as a multi media channel, with services available on the newly launched BBC Text digital teletext service, and on BBC Online. The channel had an educational aim, which was modified later on in its life to offer documentaries.

lamborghini

Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. (Italian: [lamborˈɡiːni] ( listen)) is an Italian brand and manufacturer of luxury sports cars and, formerly, SUVs, which is owned by the Volkswagen Group through its subsidiary brand division Audi. Lamborghini's production facility and headquarters are located in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy. In 2011, Lamborghini's 831 employees produced 1,711 vehicles.

Ferruccio Lamborghini, an Italian manufacturing magnate, founded Automobili Ferruccio Lamborghini S.p.A. in 1963 to compete with established marques, including Ferrari. The company gained wide acclaim in 1966 for the Miura sports coupé, which established rear mid-engine, rear wheel drive as the standard layout for high-performance cars of the era. Lamborghini grew rapidly during its first decade, but sales plunged in the wake of the 1973 worldwide financial downturn and the oil crisis. The firm's ownership changed three times after 1973, including a bankruptcy in 1978. American Chrysler Corporation took control of Lamborghini in 1987 and sold it to Malaysian investment group Mycom Setdco and Indonesian group V'Power Corporation in 1994. In 1998, Mycom Setdco and V'Power sold Lamborghini to the Volkswagen Group where it was placed under the control of the group's Audi division.

New products and model lines were introduced to the brand's portfolio and brought to the market and saw an increased productivity for the brand Lamborghini. In the late 2000s, during the worldwide financial crisis and the subsequent economic crisis, Lamborghini's sales saw a drop of nearly 50 percent.

Lamborghini produces sports cars and V12 engines for offshore powerboat racing. Lamborghini currently produces the V12-powered Aventador and the V10-powered Huracán.

History
Main article: History of Lamborghini

Manufacturing magnate Italian Ferruccio Lamborghini founded the company in 1963 with the objective of producing a refined grand touring car to compete with offerings from established marques such as Ferrari. The company's first models were released in the mid-1960s and were noted for their refinement, power and comfort. Lamborghini gained wide acclaim in 1966 for the Miura sports coupé, which established rear mid-engine, rear wheel drive as the standard layout for high-performance cars of the era.

Lamborghini grew rapidly during its first decade, but sales plunged in the wake of the 1973 worldwide financial downturn and the oil crisis. Ferruccio Lamborghini sold ownership of the company to Georges-Henri Rossetti and René Leimer and retired in 1974. The company went bankrupt in 1978, and was placed in the receivership of brothers Jean-Claude and Patrick Mimran in 1980. The Mimrans purchased the company out of receivership by 1984 and invested heavily in the company's expansion. Under the Mimrans' management, Lamborghini's model line was expanded from the Countach to include the Jalpa sports car and the LM002 high performance off-road vehicle.

The Mimrans sold Lamborghini to the Chrysler Corporation in 1987. After replacing the Countach with the Diablo and discontinuing the Jalpa and the LM002, Chrysler sold Lamborghini to Malaysian investment group Mycom Setdco and Indonesian group V'Power Corporation in 1994. In 1998, Mycom Setdco and V'Power sold Lamborghini to the Volkswagen Group where it was placed under the control of the group's Audi division. New products and model lines were introduced to the brand's portfolio and brought to the market and saw an increased productivity for the brand Lamborghini. In the late 2000s, during the worldwide financial crisis and the subsequent economic crisis, Lamborghini's sales saw a drop of nearly 50 percent.
Products
Automobiles
Main article: List of Lamborghini automobiles
Huracán

As of the 2014 model year, Lamborghini's automobile product range consists of two model lines, both of which are mid-engine two-seat sports cars.The V12-powered Aventador line consists of the LP 700–4 coupé and roadster.The V10-powered Huracán line currently includes only the LP 610-4 coupé.[citation needed]
Marine engines
L900 marine engine

Motori Marini Lamborghini produces a large V12 marine engine block for use in World Offshore Series Class 1 powerboats. A Lamborghini branded marine engine displaces approximately 8,171 cc (499 cu in) and outputs approximately 940 hp (700 kW).
Lamborghini motorcycle

In the mid-1980s, Lamborghini produced a limited-production run of a 1,000 cc sports motorcycle. UK weekly newspaper Motor Cycle News reported in 1994 – when featuring an example available through an Essex motorcycle retailer - that 24 examples were produced with a Lamborghini alloy frame having adjustable steering head angle, Kawasaki GPz1000RX engine/transmission unit, Ceriani front forks and Marvic wheels. The bodywork was plastic and fully integrated with front fairing merged into fuel tank and seat cover ending in a rear tail-fairing. The motorcycles were designed by Lamborghini stylists and produced by French business Boxer Bikes.
Branded merchandise

Lamborghini licenses its brand to manufacturers that produce a variety of Lamborghini-branded consumer goods including scale models, clothing, accessories and electronics.

http://t.co/i1nFvvzpF0

HTC History

HTC Corporation pinyin: Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī), formerly High-Tech Computer Corporation,is a Taiwanese manufacturer of smartphones and tablets headquartered in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Founded in 1997, HTC began as an original design manufacturer and original equipment manufacturer, designing and manufacturing devices such as mobile phones, touchscreen phones, and PDAs based on Windows Mobile OS and Brew MP to market to mobile network operators who were willing to pay a contract manufacturer for customized products. After initially making smartphones based mostly on Windows Mobile, HTC expanded its focus in 2009 to devices based on the Android, and in 2010 to Windows Phone. As of 2011, HTC primarily releases and markets its smartphones under the HTC brand, ranking as the 98th top brand on Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2011 report.[6] A September 2013 media report stated that HTC's share of the global smartphone market is less than 3 percent and its stock price has fallen by 90 percent since 2011.

HTC is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, a group of handset manufacturers and mobile network operators dedicated to the development of the Android mobile device platform.The HTC Dream, marketed by T-Mobile in many countries as the T-Mobile G1 or Era G1, was the first phone on the market to use the Android mobile device platform.

History[edit]
Cher Wang H. T. Cho (卓火土), and Peter Chou (周永明) founded HTC in 1997.Initially a manufacturer of notebook computers, HTC began designing some of the world's first touch and wireless hand-held devices in 1998.[10] The company is credited with creating the first Android smartphone, the first Microsoft-powered smartphone (2002) and the first Microsoft 3G phone (2005). Their first major product, one of the world's first touch-screen smartphones, appeared in 2000. As an ODM for HP and Palm, HTC built the HP iPAQ and the Palm Treo 650.

In 2007 HTC acquired the mobile-device company Dopod International.

In October 2009, HTC launched the brand tagline "quietly brilliant", and the YOU campaign, HTC's first global advertising campaign.

In June 2010, the company launched the HTC Evo 4G, the first 4G-capable phone in the United States.In July 2010, HTC announced it would begin selling smartphones in China under its own brand name in a partnership with China Mobile.In 2010 HTC sold over 24.6 million handsets, up 111% over 2009.

At the Mobile World Congress on 16 February 2011, the GSM Association named HTC the "Device Manufacturer of the Year" for 2011. In April 2011, the company's market value surpassed that of Nokia, making HTC the third-largest smartphone-maker in the world behind Apple and Samsung.

On 6 July 2011, it was announced that HTC would buy VIA Technologies' stake in S3 Graphics, thus becoming the majority owner of S3.On 6 August 2011, HTC acquired Dashwire for $18.5M. In August 2011, HTC confirmed a plan for a strategic partnership with Beats Electronics involving acquiring 51 percent of Beats' shares.

On 27 September 2013, HTC announced that it sold back all remaining shares of Beats to Beats Electronics. The deal is expected to be closed in Q4 of 2013.The 2011 Best Global Brands rankings released by Interbrand, listed HTC at #98 and valued it at $3.6 billion.Based on researcher Canalys, in Q3 2011 HTC Corporation became the largest smartphone vendor in the U.S. with 24 percent market share, ahead of Samsung's 21 percent, Apple Inc.'s 20 percent and BlackBerry's 9 percent. HTC Corporation made different models for each operator.

During early 2012, HTC lost much of this U.S. market share due to increased competition from Samsung and Apple Inc.According to analyst firm comScore, HTC only accounted for 9.3% of the United States smartphone market as of February 2013. In light of the company's decrease in prominence, Chief Executive Peter Chou had informed executives that he would step down if the company's newest flagship phone, the 2013 HTC One, had failed to generate impressive sales results.HTC's first quarter results for 2013 showed its year-over-year profit drop by 98.1%, making it the smallest-ever profit for the company—the delay of the launch of the HTC One was cited as one of the factors.In June 2012, HTC moved its headquarters from Taoyuan City (now Taoyuan District) to Xindian District, New Taipei City.[citation needed]

In August 2013, HTC debuted a new "Here's To Change" global marketing campaign featuring actor Robert Downey, Jr., who signed a two-year contract to be HTC's new "Instigator of Change." On 15 August, HTC began airing the new marketing campaign on YouTube, prior to the campaign's appearance in television and cinema advertising schedules.

On September 27, 2013, HTC announced the sale of its entire stake (24.84 percent) in Beats Electronics. The company will close the deal in the fourth quarter of 2013 and expects a US$85 million pretax profit.]

The 2013 HTC One was released in mid-2013 and, subsequently won various industry awards in the best smartphone and best design categories, but global sales of the HTC One were lower than those for Samsung's Galaxy S4 flagship handset and HTC recorded its first ever quarterly loss in early October 2013: a deficit of just under NT$3 billion (about US$100m, £62m). Marketing problems were identified by HTC as the primary reason for its comparative performance, a factor that had been previously cited by the company.

Following the release of the HTC One, two variants were released to form a trio for the 2013 HTC One lineup. A smaller variant named the HTC One Mini was released in August 2013, and a larger variant named the HTC One Max was released in October 2013. Similar in design and features to the HTC One, the upgraded aspects of the One Max include a display measuring 5.9 inches (15 cm), a fingerprint sensor and a removable back cover for expandable memory.The product was released into the European and Asian retail environment in October 2013, followed by a US launch in early November 2013.

In March 2014, HTC released the 2014 HTC One or "M8", the next version of the HTC One flagship, at press conferences in London and New York City. In a change from previous launches, the HTC One was made available for purchase on the company website and North American mobile carrier websites on the same day a few hours after the launch.

In April 2014, the smartphone company reported sales climbing 12.7 percent to NT$22.1 billion, the company's fastest growth since October 2011.

Dell Inc. is an American privately owned multinational computer technology company based in Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells, repairs and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 103,300 people worldwide.

Dell sells personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals, HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players and also electronics built by other manufacturers. The company is well known for its innovations in supply chain management and electronic commerce, particularly its direct-sales model and its "build-to-order" or "configure to order" approach to manufacturing—delivering individual PCs configured to customer specifications.Dell was a pure hardware vendor for much of its existence, but with the acquisition in 2009 of Perot Systems, Dell entered the market for IT services. The company has since made additional acquisitions in storage and networking systems, with the aim of expanding their portfolio from offering computers only to delivering complete solutions for enterprise customers.

Dell was listed at number 51 in the Fortune 500 list, until 2014.After going private in 2013, the newly confidential nature of its financial information prevents the company from being ranked by Fortune. In 2013 it was the third largest PC vendor in the world after Lenovo and HP. Dell is currently the #1 shipper of PC monitors in the world. Dell is the sixth largest company in Texas by total revenue, according to Fortune magazine.It is the second largest non-oil company in Texas – behind AT&T – and the largest company in the Greater Austin area. It was a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: DELL), as well as a component of the NASDAQ-100 and S&P 500, until it was taken private in a leveraged buyout which closed on October 30, 2013.
History
Main article: History of Dell

Dell's first logo from 1984 to 1989.
Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created Dell Computer Corporation, which at the time did business as PC's Limited,  while a student of the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components. Dell dropped out of school to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting $1,000 in expansion-capital from his family. In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the Turbo PC, which sold for $795. PC's Limited advertised its systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers and custom assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. The company grossed more than $73 million in its first year of operation.

In 1986, Michael Dell brought in Lee Walker, a 51-year-old venture capitalist, as president and chief operating officer, to serve as Michael's mentor and implement Michael's ideas for growing the company. Walker was also instrumental in recruiting members to the board of directors when the company went public in 1988. Walker retired in 1990 due to health, and Michael Dell hired Morton Meyerson, former CEO and president of Electronic Data Systems to transform the company from a fast-growing medium-sized firm into a billion-dollar enterprise.

The company dropped the PC’s Limited dba in 1987 to be Dell Computer Corporation and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share. In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever.

In 1993, to complement its own direct sales channel, Dell planned to sell PCs at big-box retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, which would have brought in an additional $125 million in annual revenue. However, Bain consultant Kevin Rollins persuaded Michael Dell to pull out of these deals, believing they would be money losers in the long run. Indeed, margins at retail were thin at best and Dell left the reseller channel in 1994.Rollins would soon join Dell full-time and eventually become the company President and CEO.

Growth in 1990s and early 2000sOriginally, Dell did not emphasize the consumer market, due to the higher costs and unacceptably low profit margins in selling to individuals and households; however, this changed when the company’s Internet site took off in 1996 and 1997. While the industry’s average selling price to individuals was going down, Dell’s was going up, as second- and third-time computer buyers who wanted powerful computers with multiple features and did not need much technical support were choosing Dell. Dell found an opportunity among PC-savvy individuals who liked the convenience of buying direct, customizing their PC to their means, and having it delivered in days. In early 1997, Dell created an internal sales and marketing group dedicated to serving the home market and introduced a product line designed especially for individual users.

From 1997 to 2004, Dell enjoyed steady growth and it gained market share from competitors even during industry slumps. During the same period, rival PC vendors such as Compaq, Gateway, IBM, Packard Bell, and AST Research would struggle and eventually leave the market or get bought out.Dell surpassed Compaq to become the largest PC manufacturer in 1999. Operating costs made up only 10 percent of Dell's $35 billion in revenue in 2002, compared with 21 percent of revenue at Hewlett-Packard, 25 percent at Gateway, and 46 percent at Cisco. In 2002, when Compaq merged with Hewlett Packard (the fourth-place PC maker), the newly combined Hewlett Packard took the top spot but struggled and Dell soon regained its lead. Dell grew the fastest in the early 2000s.

Dell attained and maintained the number 1 rating in PC reliability and customer service/technical support, according to Consumer Reports, year after year, during the mid-to-late 90s through 2001 right before Windows XP was released.

In 1996, Dell began selling computers through its website.

In the mid-1990s, Dell expanded beyond desktop computers and laptops by selling servers, starting with low-end servers. The major three providers of servers at the time were IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Compaq, many of which were based on proprietary technology, such as IBM's Power4 microprocessors or various proprietary versions of the Unix operating system. Dell's new PowerEdge servers did not require a major investment in proprietary technologies, as they ran Microsoft Windows NT on Intel chips, and could be built cheaper than its competitors.[24] Consequently, Dell's enterprise revenues, almost nonexistent in 1994, accounted for 13 percent of the company's total intake by 1998. Three years later, Dell passed Compaq as the top provider of Intel-based servers, with 31 percent of the market. Dell's first acquisition occurred in 1999 with the purchase of ConvergeNet Technologies for $332 million, after Dell had failed to develop an enterprise storage system in-house; however ConvergeNet's elegant but complex technology did not fit in with Dell's commodity-producer business model, forcing Dell to write down the entire value of the acquisition.

In 2002, Dell expanded its product line to include televisions, handhelds, digital audio players, and printers. Chairman and CEO Michael Dell, however, had repeatedly blocked President and COO Kevin Rollins's attempt to lessen the company's heavy dependency on PCs, which Rollins wanted to fix by acquiring EMC Corporation.
In 2003, the company was rebranded as simply "Dell Inc." to recognize the company's expansion beyond computers.
In 2004, Michael Dell resigned as CEO while retaining the position of Chairman,handing the CEO title to Kevin Rollins, who had been President and COO since 2001. Despite no longer holding the CEO title, Dell essentially acted as a de facto co-CEO with Rollins.

Under Rollins, Dell began to loosen its ties to Microsoft and Intel, the two companies responsible for Dell's dominance in the PC business. During that time, Dell acquired Alienware,which introduced several new items to Dell products, including AMD microprocessors. To prevent cross-market products, Dell continues to run Alienware as a separate entity, but still a wholly owned subsidiary.

Rollins as CEO and disappointments
However in 2005, while earnings and sales continued to rise, sales growth slowed considerably, and the company stock lost 25% of its value that year. By June 2006, the stock traded around $25 USD which was 40% down from July 2005—the high-water mark of the company in the post-dotcom era.

The slowing sales growth has been attributed to the maturing PC market, which constituted 66% of Dell's sales, and analysts suggested that Dell needed to make inroads into non-PC businesses segments such as storage, services and servers. Dell's price advantage was tied to its ultra-lean manufacturing for desktop PCs,however this became less important as savings became harder to find inside the company's supply chain, and as competitors such as Hewlett-Packard and Acer made their PC manufacturing operations more efficient to match Dell, weakening Dell's traditional price differentiation. Throughout the entire PC industry, declines in prices along with commensurate increases in performance meant that Dell had fewer opportunities to upsell to their customers (a lucrative strategy of encouraging buyers to upgrade the processor or memory). As a result the company was selling a greater proportion of inexpensive PCs than before, which eroded profit marginsThe laptop segment had become the fastest-growing of the PC market, but Dell produced low-cost notebooks in China like other PC manufacturers which eliminated Dell's manufacturing cost advantages, plus Dell's reliance on Internet sales meant that it missed out on growing notebook sales in big box stores. CNET has suggested that Dell was getting trapped in the increasing commoditization of high volume low margin computers, which prevented it from offering more exciting devices that consumers demanded.
Despite plans of expanding into other global regions and product segments, Dell was heavily dependent on U.S. corporate PC market, as desktop PCs sold to both commercial and corporate customers accounted for 32 percent of its revenue, 85 percent of its revenue comes from businesses, and Sixty-four percent of its revenue comes from North and South America, according to its 2006 third-quarter results. However, U.S. shipments of desktop PCs were shrinking. Furthermore, the corporate PC market which purchases PCs in upgrade cycles had largely decided to take a break from buying new systems. The last cycle started around 2002, three or so years after companies started buying PCs ahead of the perceived Y2K problems, and corporate clients were not expected to upgrade again until extensive testing of Microsoft's Windows Vista (expected in early 2007), putting the next upgrade cycle around 2008.Heavily depending on PCs, Dell had to slash prices to boost sales volumes, while demanding deep cuts from suppliers.
Dell had long stuck by its direct sales model. However consumers had become the main drivers of PC sales in recent years, yet there had a decline in consumers purchasing PCs through the Web or on the phone, as increasing numbers were visiting consumer electronics retail stores to try out the devices first. Dell's rivals in the PC industry, HP, Gateway and Acer, had a long retail presence and so were well poised to take advantage of the consumer shift.The lack of a retail presence stymied Dell's attempts to offer consumer electronics such as flat-panel TVs and MP3 players. Dell responded by experimenting with mall kiosks, plus quasi-retail stores in Texas and New York.

Dell had a reputation as a company that relied upon supply chain efficiencies to sell established technologies at low prices, instead of being an innovatorBy the mid-2000s many analysts were looking to innovating companies as the next source of growth in the technology sector. Dell's low spending on R&D relative to its revenue (compared to IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Apple Inc.)—which worked well in the commoditized PC market—prevented it from making inroads into more lucrative segments, such as MP3 players and later mobile devices.[29] Increasing spending on R&D would have cut into the operating margins that the company emphasized.[4] Dell had done well with a horizontal organization that focused on PCs when the computing industry moved to horizontal mix-and-match layers in the 1980s, however by the mid-2000 the industry shifted to vertically integrated stacks to deliver complete IT solutions and Dell lagged far behind competitors like Hewlett Packard and Oracle.

Dell's reputation for poor customer service, since 2002, which was exacerbated as it moved call centres offshore and as its growth outstripped its technical support infrastructure, came under increasing scrutiny on the Web. The original Dell model was known for high customer satisfaction when PCs sold for thousands but by the 2000s, the company could not justify that level of service when computers in the same lineup sold for hundreds. Rollins responded by shifting Dick Hunter from head of manufacturing to head of customer service. Hunter, who noted that Dell's DNA of cost-cutting "got in the way," aimed to reduce call transfer times and have call center representatives resolve inquiries in one call. By 2006, Dell had spent $100 million in just a few months to improve on this, and rolled out DellConnect to answer customer inquiries more quickly. In July 2006, the company started its Direct2Dell blog, and then in February 2007, Michael Dell launched IdeaStorm.com, asking customers for advice including selling Linux computers and reducing the promotional "bloatware" on PCs. These initiatives did manage to cut the negative blog posts from 49% to 22%, as well as reduce the "Dell Hell" prominent on Internet search engines.

There was also criticism that Dell used faulty components for its PCs, particularly the 11.8 million OptiPlex desktop computers sold to businesses and governments from May 2003 to July 2005, that suffered from bad capacitors made by a company called Nichicon.A battery recall in August 2006, as a result of a Dell laptop catching fire caused much negative attention for the company though later, Sony was found responsible for the faulty batteries.

2006 marked the first year that Dell's growth was slower than the PC industry as a whole. By the fourth quarter of 2006, Dell lost its title of the largest PC manufacturer to rival Hewlett Packard whose Personal Systems Group was invigorated thanks to a restructuring initiated by their CEO Mark Hurd.

After four out of five quarterly earnings reports were below expectations, Rollins resigned as President and CEO on January 31, 2007 and founder Michael Dell assumed the role of CEO again

Dell 2.0 and downsizing[edit]
Dell announced a change campaign called "Dell 2.0," reducing the number of employees and diversifying the company's products.[36][44] While chairman of the board after relinquishing his CEO position, Michael Dell still had significant input in the company during Rollins' years as CEO. However with the return of Michael Dell as CEO, the company saw immediate changes in operations, the exodus of many senior vice-presidents and new personnel brought in from outside the company. Michael Dell announced a number of initiatives and plans (part of the "Dell 2.0" initiative) to improve the company's financial performance. These include elimination of 2006 bonuses for employees with some discretionary awards, reduction in the number of managers reporting directly to Michael Dell from 20 to 12, and reduction of "bureaucracy." Jim Schneider retired as CFO and was replaced by Donald Carty, as the company came under an SEC probe for its accounting practices.

On April 23, 2008, Dell announced the closure of one of its biggest Canadian call-centers in Kanata, Ontario, terminating approximately 1100 employees, with 500 of those redundancies effective on the spot, and with the official closure of the center scheduled for the summer. The call-center had opened in 2006 after the city of Ottawa won a bid to host it. Less than a year later, Dell planned to double its workforce to nearly 3,000 workers add a new building. However these plans were reversed, due to a high Canadian dollar that made the Ottawa staff relatively expensive, and also as part of Dell's turnaround, which involved moving these call-center jobs offshore to cut costs. The company had also announced the shutdown of its Edmonton, Alberta office, losing 900 jobs. In total, Dell announced the ending of about 8,800 jobs in 2007-2008 — 10% of its workforce.

By the late 2000s, Dell's "configure to order" approach of manufacturing—delivering individual PCs configured to customer specifications from its US facilities was no longer as efficient or competitive with high-volume Asian contract manufacturers as PCs became powerful low-cost commodities.Dell closed plants that produced desktop computers for the North American market, including the Mort Topfer Manufacturing Center in Austin, Texas (original location) and Lebanon, Tennessee (opened in 1999) in 2008 and early 2009, respectively. The desktop production plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina received $280 million USD in incentives from the state and opened in 2005, but ceased operations in November 2010. Dell's contract with the state required them to repay the incentives for failing to meet the conditions, and they sold the North Carolina plant to Herbalif. Most of the work that used to take place in Dell's U.S. plants was transferred to contract manufacturers in Asia and Mexico, or some of Dell's own factories overseas. The Miami, Florida facility of its Alienware subsidiary remains in operation, while Dell continues to produce its servers (its most profitable products) in Austin, Texas.  On January 8, 2009 Dell announced the closure of its manufacturing plant in Limerick, Ireland with the loss of 1,900 jobs and the transfer of production to its plant in Łodź in Poland.

The release of Apple's iPad tablet computer had a negative impact on Dell and other major PC vendors, as consumers switched away from desktop and laptop PCs. Dell's own mobility division has not managed success with developing smartphones or tablets, whether running Windows or Google Android.The Dell Streak was a failure commercially and critically due to its outdated OS, numerous bugs, and low resolution screen. InfoWorld suggested that Dell and other OEMs saw tablets as a short-term, low-investment opportunity running Google Android, an approach that neglected user interface and failed to gain long term market traction with consumers.Dell has responded by pushing higher-end PCs, such as the XPS line of notebooks, which do not compete with the Apple iPad and Kindle Fire tablets.The growing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers instead of PCs drove Dell's consumer segment to an operating loss in Q3 2012. In December 2012, Dell suffered its first decline in holiday sales in five years, despite the introduction of Windows 8.

In the shrinking PC industry, Dell continued to lose market share, as it dropped below Lenovo in 2011 to fall to number three in the world. Dell and fellow American contemporary Hewlett Packard came under pressure from Asian PC manufacturers Lenovo, Asus, and Acer, all of which had lower production costs and willing to accept lower profit margins. In addition, while the Asian PC vendors had been improving their quality and design, for instance Lenovo's ThinkPad series was winning corporate customers away from Dell's laptops, Dell's customer service and reputation had been slipping.[61][62] Dell remained the second-most profitable PC vendor, as it took 13 percent of operating profits in the PC industry during Q4 2012, behind Apple Inc.'s Macintosh that took 45 percent, seven percent at Hewlett Packard, six percent at Lenovo and Asus, and one percent for Acer.

Dell has been attempting to offset its declining PC business, which still accounted for half of its revenue and generates steady cash flow,[64] by expanding into the enterprise market with servers, networking, software, and services.It avoided many of the acquisition writedowns and management turnover that plagued its chief rival Hewlett Packard.Dell also managed some success in taking advantage of its high-touch direct sales heritage to establish close relationships and design solutions for clients. However despite spending $13 billion on acquisitions to diversify its portfolio beyond hardware,the company was unable to convince the market that it could thrive or made the transformation in the post-PC world,as it suffered continued declines in revenue and share price. Dell's market share in the corporate segment was previously a "moat" against rivals but this has no longer been the case as sales and profits have dropped fallen precipitously.

2013 buyout[edit]
After several weeks of rumors, which started around January 11, 2013, Dell announced on February 5, 2013 that it had struck a $24.4 billion leveraged buyout deal, that would have delisted its shares from the NASDAQ and Hong Kong Stock Exchange and taken it private. Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners, aided by a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, will buy the public shares at $13.65 a piece. The $24.4 billion buyout is the largest leveraged buyout backed by private equity since the 2007 financial crisis.It is also the largest technology buyout ever, surpassing the 2006 buyout of Freescale Semiconductor for $17.5 billion.

The founder of Dell, Michael Dell, said of the buyout "I believe this transaction will open an exciting new chapter for Dell, our customers and team members". Dell rival Lenovo reacted to the buyout, saying "the financial actions of some of our traditional competitors will not substantially change our outlook".Meanwhile, HP stated that Dell's traditional product innovation might suffer as a result of the buyout.

The buyout price represents a small premium over the current stock price, and much lower than the stock's all-time high of $65 USD per share reached during the dotcom bubble in 2000, as well as its July 2005 price of $40 USD which was the high-water mark of the post-dotcom era. The price of $13.65 per share represented a 25 per cent premium to the stock price, but far below the 52-week high of $18.36, and more than 76 per cent off its all-time high.Several major institutional shareholders have voiced opposition, including Southeastern Asset Management and Mason Hawkins.[Michael Dell owns the largest single share of the company's stock and was part of negotiations to go private, however he is offering only $750 million of his own money for a deal that will involve almost $16 billion in new debt. T. Rowe Price, which has the third largest holding, also objected to the low price of the proposal.Southeastern Asset Management, the largest shareholder of Dell stock with about 8.5%, is opposed to the deal at the per share price of $13.50 to $13.75 as they value the company at $23.72 a share.Southeastern also complained that the overseas funds aren't offered to sweeten the buyout offer.

Typical leveraged buyouts have been viewed as tools of vulture capitalists. Ordinarily, the buyer seeks to break up the firm and layoff workers, or bring greater efficiency and new management to a troubled firm. The Dell leveraged buyout is unusual because the driving force behind the deal was not a vulture capitalist, but rather, Michael Dell, who was already the Chairman and CEO, founder, and largest shareholder of the firm. Unlike most leveraged buyouts that aim to wrest management control away from incumbents, the Dell deal intends to keep the same leadership team in place. The main aim of Dell's leveraged buyout is to rejigger the company’s financial structure.By going private, Dell would be able to radically restructure its legacy PC business and build up its enterprise solutions and cloud computing, without worrying about the impact on its quarterly results and its stock price.Gartner has warned that this may include Dell leaving the PC market entirely.

In March 2013, the Blackstone Group and Carl Icahn expressed interest in purchasing Dell. In April 2013, Blackstone withdrew their offer, citing deteriorating business. Other private equity firms such as KKR & Co. and TPG Capital declined to submit alternative bids for Dell, citing the uncertain market for personal computers and competitive pressures, so the "wide-open bidding war" never materialized. Analysts said that the biggest challenge facing Silver Lake would be to find an “exit strategy” to profit from its investment, which would be when the company would hold an IPO to go public again, and one warned “But even if you can get a $25bn enterprise value for Dell, it will take years to get out.”

In May 2013, Dell joined his board in voting for his offer. The following August he reached a deal with the special committee on the board for a raised price of $13.75 plus a special dividend of 13 cents per share, as well as a change to the voting rules.[93] The offer was accepted on September 12and closed on October 30, 2013, ending Dell's 25 year run as a publicly traded company.

After the buyout the newly private Dell offered a Voluntary Separation Programme that they expected to reduce their workforce by up to seven percent. The reception to the program so exceeded the expectations that Dell may be forced to hire new staff to make up for the losses.

On July 18, 2014, Dell announced that customers would be able to make purchases on its website using Bitcoin, claiming to become the biggest retailer yet to accept the virtual currency.