History

Established in 1996, Alienware assembles high performance desktops, notebooks, and workstations. According to employees, the Alienware name was chosen because of the founders' fondness for the hit television series The X-Files, hence the theme to their products, with names such as Area-51, Hangar18, m15x, and Aurora.[1]

Alienware was originally established to tap a niche in the high performance game market, which back then was not on the radar of the major PC manufacturers such as Dell. Since high-end game hardware was not widely distributed, the company's founders formed an OEM which sold personal computers with the highest performing hardware and settings according to benchmarks. The company products are not only famous for their hardware configurations, but also for their unique, sci-fi-based designs.
Acquisition and current status

Dell had been considering buying Alienware since the year 2002, but did not take any action until March 22, 2006,

when it agreed to purchase the company.The new subsidiary maintained its autonomy in terms of design and marketing.
However, Alienware's access to Dell's supply chain, purchasing power, and economies of scale would lower its operating
costs.

Initially, Dell maintained its competing XPS line of gaming PCs, often selling computers with the same specifications. In hindsight, the XPS line may have hurt Alienware's market share within its high end market segment. Due to corporate restructuring in the spring of 2008, the XPS brand has been scaled down. Many of the founders of Alienware have been moved from executive roles to product-development roles. Product development of gaming PCs has been consolidated with Dell's gaming division, with Alienware becoming Dell's premier gaming brand. It remains to be seen if this move will dilute the Alienware brand's reputation for irreverence.

Operations

Alienware established its EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) headquarters in Athlone, Ireland in October 2002. As of FY 2005, Alienware brought in upwards of $170 million USD in annual sales .while undertaking an international expansion initiative launched in 2003 to maintain a presence in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Costa Rica. Alienware has had a self-owned and operated call center in Costa Rica to handle all sales and support calls for a number of years. The Alienware call center in Costa Rica has won numerous awards and has been the subject of study by industry insiders. Additionally, Alienware allows customers to send in old computer hardware in exchange for credit toward new hardware as part of their AlienExchange program.

News

November 2008, Alienware launched the new Alienware M17, their first mobile quad-core processor, ATI CrossfireX™ notebook.

In the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a prototype was presented of what is being described as a "giant 'curved' widescreen", i.e. a display which would be equivalent in size to two, slightly bent 24-inch LCD screens glued together.

Competitors

Alienware has traditionally competed with companies such as Falcon Northwest, Puget Systems, Velocity Micro, and VoodooPC (which is now part of Dell's largest competitor, Hewlett-Packard). Before being acquired by Dell, Alienware also competed against Dell XPS gaming systems.