Now that Dell is signaling its intention to vault into the smartphone market, industry watchers are asking whether the company can make a serious run. Don’t bet on it.
In August, Dell announced plans to release a smartphone in China. In early October, it hinted at plans to enter the U.S. smartphone market, without going into detail.
Dell is nothing if not conservative, and it continues to waffle about exactly what it has planned. The company appears to have chosen to enter the smartphone market in as low-risk way as possible, partnering with established industry giants AT&T and Google. But it won’t say when its products will arrive or how they’ll work. Part of the reason for this tentative stance is that the stakes are extremely high.
Fallen From Its Perch
Dell was once a formidable rival to other PC makers, and a Wall Street darling, thanks to its ability to produce more cheaply, and sell more plentifully, than competitors. Now it has fallen from its perch.
When PC industry growth shifted from business desktops to notebooks sold to consumers, Dell was out of its element. It had trouble managing the notebook supply chain and making the kind of smartly designed machines consumers wanted. The company has taken steps to remedy those ills in recent years. Its computer designs now rival even those of Hewlett-Packard, the industry leader in consumer notebooks.
But it’s still playing catchup in the handheld computer market. It might be asking too much for a company known for making boring business PCs to leap to the front of the pack in the smartphone market. Dell may not have the DNA for this kind of reinvention.
Tablets on the Way
A few years ago, mobile computing pretty much meant carrying a notebook computer. Then, Research In Motion put the office in our pockets with its…