The mobile market is still going strong, even as technology makes new and exciting developments and upgrades possible for reliable models and providers. The competition continues to heat up as partnerships and mergers change the mobile handset development and production landscape and make new models and marketing strategies possible, and fierce angling for new ways to cater to the necessary involved demographics continues to be seen in the marketplace. Technology allows mobile handset producers to develop units that are paradoxically lighter and more streamlined but more loaded with applications and features and equipment that integrate newly-emerging “necessities” for day to day use.
Multinational technology corporation Dell is reportedly looking to step beyond its personal-computer-production niche by releasing a smartphone in the US in 2010. This development would mark Dell’s full-on entry into the white-hot smartphone market, supposedly by tying up with AT&T Mobility, America’s second largest operator. Dell could use a stake with which to continue its climb on the Fortune 500 list – placing 8th in 2008, a strong leap up from its ranking as 25th-largest company in the same list of 2006. Dell’s entry into the smartphone game has been considerably hinted at over the course of this year, and this could spell a big change in the way they play.
Marking their own first foray into the Android game, AT&T Mobility may launch the Dell smartphone with Google’s Android OS, an operating system that is proving popular for quite a few companies launching new smartphone models. Reports have been rife all year that AT&T and Dell’s phone would likely have a touch screen and camera, and might be similar to the Mini 3i, a phone that Dell and China Mobile displayed this summer at a China-based event. The 3i was called a “proof of concept” device, but ended up fueling speculation anyway.
It was amid much anticipation that on October 16 of this year, Dell CEO Michael Dell put an end to the speculation when he personally confirmed a planned move by Dell to release an Android phone in the US in 2010. At the FiReGlobal conference in Seattle, Dell said that “You’ll probably see some products next year in the United States that are family members with some of the things we started in China,” possibly referencing the aforementioned Mini 3i. “They’d be Android,” was a follow-up comment offered when asked about the operating system that would form the platform for the new phone model.
Prior to all this, Dell executives had carefully and safely responded to questions and dropped cryptic hints about their future plans but were cagey about mentioning the smartphone business – a PC magazine report noted that Dell executives did not specifically claim entry into the smartphone market. References to this entry during an open question-and-answer session with the panel, however, were not corrected or denied. A Reuters report in April noted that Dell would be releasing a smartphone in China – via a partnership with Taiwanese company Hon Hai’s Chi Mei Communications for the design and Chinese software company red Office for the software – by the end of 2009, but did not mention a US release.
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