Michael Dell reclaims Dell CEO throne, Dell 2.0 begins by ZDNet’s Larry Dignan — Michael Dell is CEO again of his namesake company. Kevin Rollins is out. Why? The company is going to have another earnings miss. Dell said it “expects its fourth quarter fiscal year 2007 results to be below the average of First Call estimates for both revenue and earnings per share.” According to Thomson Financial, Dell is projected to report fourth quarter revenue of $15.3 billion and earnings of 32 cents a share. For the year, Dell is expected to report revenue of $58 billion and earnings of $1.17 a share.

Dell’s biggest issue is that its manufacturing prowess isn’t the edge it used to be. And Dell doesn’t spend enough on research and development to truly innovate. As a result, Dell is mired in a commodity hardware game. That game plan was fine when rivals were inefficient, but HP can now squeeze Dell on price. What should Dell do? That’s the topic for a subsequent post on this blog.