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orldwide (United States Securities and Exchange Commission, 2008). In the fourth quarter last fiscal, the company earnings of 144 million, operating profit was 8.01 billion, in cash and investments totalled 12.5 billion U.S. dollars; Dell's direct sales Web site www.dell.com site 84 countries, the use 20 languages / dialects and 26 currencies, visit each quarter more than 20 billion times, the world's largest e-commerce site (United States Securities and Exchange Commission, 2009).

Firstly, information technology is a valuable intangible source for computers manufactures, including DELL and its competitors Microsoft, IBM, HP and Compaq. As DELL it describes its information technology jobs on its official website:

“Positive. Productive. Progressive. That’s how we navigate change. In an organization as influential as Dell, it's no surprise that information technology (IT) plays such an enormous role in our day-to-day operations. A job in IT at Dell offers broad exposure to some of the most complex and highly sought projects, technologies and software. Our world-class products and services rely on a dynamic infrastructure — which in turn relies on individuals like you with the talent and drive to keep it all running. The IT team at Dell creates, deploys and supports global, industry-leading assets and services. We deliver services and solutions to customers both internally and externally, meaning there's widespread opportunity to learn, advance and take your career in many different directions.” (DELL, 2011:1)

DELL computer has acknowledged that its information technology (IT) creation and innovation has resulted in large profits and IT has been used not only to create competitive advantages but also help to form DELL-style sustainable strategy. DELL unique business model----direct sales and build-to-order---requires a higher level in information technology. According to Kraemer, Dedrick and Yamashiro (2000:1), DELL’s application of information technology (IT) offers valuable insights into how IT can be used to achieve flexibility and speed in an area where time is critical and has been vital to processing both elements of its business model---direct sales and build-to-order.

Applying unique models of direct sales and build-to-order in computer business, can enable DELL reduce sales costs without extra procedures to deal with distributors and minimize inventory by selling computers directly to customer via orders online. Build-to-order model based on Dell’s mature information technology has created sustainable selling capabilities for its proceeding careers. It is successful for Michael Dell to choose the business model, which can be explained by Figure 1 of the historical PC sales.
Source: eTForecasts, nd
Note: the PC sales of Compaq and HP are combined for all the years including the pre-merger years shown in the table (1990, 1995 and 2000)

“DELL and Hp are currently the leading PC manufacturers in the 7 years. Compaq, DELL or HP/Compaq have been the PC sales leader since 1994 in the USA and worldwide. DELL became the worldwide PC sales leader in 2001, but was surpassed in 2002 by HP because of its merger with Compaq. DELL took the lead again in 2003 and kept the lead through 2006. Dell has a much stronger market share in the USA than worldwide. This is because Dell’s business model is fully dev