Gossip: Dell to acquire Alienware

Rahul Sood, founder of enthusiast PC company VoodooPC, has floated the idea that Dell may be warming up to AMD by acquiring an enthusiast PC maker that already knows how to deal with AMD.

Dell isn’t really a company that is known to grow by acquiring other companies, but rather by counting on its own strength. So, Sood’s idea could be seen as yet another piece of speculation that supports his enthusiasm for the AMD brand. However, he may be not far off and, as we hear, Dell may be taking another shot at inject more excitement into its higher-end PC offering through an acquisition within two or three months.

Representatives from Dell and Alienware were not available to comment on the current rumors and speculations.

Common sense tells us that such a move would make sense for Dell in several ways. Dell has been trying, somewhat in vein, to turn itself into a company that appeals to hardcore gamers with its XPS range. The company has even staged a recent series of PR stunts featuring Michael Dell himself ; including the limited edition Dell XPS 600 Renegade featured at CES which had no less than four graphics cards in it.

However as much as the hardware has met with nodding acceptance of its capabilities from the technology press, the company has not managed to overcome its PR image among gamers as a mass marketer of mass-market parts.

Alienware on the other side is established as an enthusiast company with fancy cases, overclocked hardware and - above all - a working relationship with AMD. According to Sood, a significant part of such an acquisition could be the fact that Dell could take a step-by-step approach to AMD.

"Dellienware" may only be speculation at the moment, but Sood has rung a bell with quite a few people in the industry we spoke to.

Is there any substance to Soods speculation ? We don’t know. But we’d like to hear your opinion, if such a deal could change Dell’s face to become a more exciting PC company.

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