So, Dell are dropping Itanium, apparently because Intel have stopped developing the support chipsets and now leave that up to people like HP and SGI.

Best quote from the article has to be:

Dell’s decision is hardly surprising given its poor sales figures. Dell lives or dies by high volumes, but last year shipped just 1,371 Itanium servers. That’s up from just 12 the previous year, but it was enough to give Dell five per cent of the IA-64 market.