Slashdot Mirror
Dell To Enter PDA Market
soundsop writes "CNET News.com reports that Dell is poised to enter the PDA market. Michael Dell states that announcements for US PDA products are coming "really soon". Will I have 50 configuration options on my Dell PDA?"
In the good old days, everyone had an account on the central company server. (I had 250kB on an old winchester drive!) Nowdays we all have an account (or several) accesable over the internet. Over the years the internet has become mobile and I want to reach my files etc. even when I travel. This is probably one reason to why the PDA market has exploded in such a way as it has. Another important factor is the price and size of electronics; one can actually make a palm sized useful computer today to a price that some of us can afford.
This move by DELL shows that the PDA market has grown, and become more mature. That is, PDAs are not only geek toys, but today they can be quite useful (even though I still use mine for vrally!).
In the future I imagine almost everyone carrying PDAs that can be wirelessly conneced to a screen (or a projector) to show stuff, or terminals with proper kbds and mice to do real work. The PDA will be the phone, computer, wallet and calendar of today, and hopefully not running Palladium!
On the other hand, this could be simply another way to push WindowsCE through some backdoor agreement with Bill and Co. But we can only wait and see.
I just hope that Dell's PDA doesn't turn into another Palm clone (Handspring, et. al)
You can build a PDA like a PC or a pizza. Dell has enjoyed tremendous success by having super-efficient supply chain management. They're able to build PCs using off-the-shelf parts cheaper than anyone else. It's all because they keep inventories low and have tried to make every step as efficient as possible.
For this to work in a PDA, they only thing they can realistically do is co-brand someone else's device. If that happens they won't be much more than a sales force for the other person's technology.
If they decide to actually design and build one themselves, I think it would be a major shift in corporate strategy.
I can imagine that they would be rather interested in the Dell product simply because it is Dell.
And the big thing there is that it would displace everything else (Palm, Linux based PDA) with Win CE, virtually assuring MS dominance in the PDA field as other large companies also standardize on Dell.
At the risk of sounding stupid, of course it does.
The larger the number of people in the market, the greater the competition. Given that the software specifications are pretty much the same (helped by Microsofts specifications) you've got only a few things that companies can compete on such as hardware specs (including dimensions and weight), battery life, upgradability and best of all price.
So if more players in the market causes others to start making strides to produce a better product, then it can only be seen as a good thing.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Now they make 10/100/1000 "PowerConnect" switches. So why not enter the PDA market?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If you buy a Dellpaq with your box, Dell makes $30 bucks (or whatever the profit margin is). That's why they're doing it. They know people buying computers might want to buy PDAs. If they can buy them both at the same time, they might be more likely to buy them from Dell.
I wouldn't dream of underestimating them, but I just hope that they don't overestimate themselves. Even if they did achieve a market share that allowed them near-monopolistic powers, I'd be worried they'd lose it the moment they tried to leverage them.
I just don't see a huge ammount of brand loyalty in the beige box business. I see loyalty for servers, I see people get worked up into a slather over operating systems, but very rarely do you see Dell and Gateway fans having it out. I think it's a bit like Intel - they thought they had near monopoly powers, and they certainly had near monopoly size... but the moment they let their guard down, AMD jumped in down their throats. Intel had raised prices, and AMD slashed them. Things are only just now getting back to what used to be 'normal'. It'll be interesting to see what happens when each company rolls out it's line of 64 bit processors.
What does this have to do with Dell? I just think a Dell isn't like a Ford, or McDonalds. People compare the (meaningless) numbers, and come up with some not entirely usefull $/MHz comparison, and then buy whatever seems best to them. Apple has brand loyalty because they have some kind of soul lurking in each machine. Dell has... a kid who's very excited about getting one on TV.
I like Dell, I do. They revolutionized quite a few things by building to order, rather than keeping stock. But I think things like bundled printers have been giving other bundled devices bad names. (You know these printers. They come with no ink, cost more than the printer to refill, and then break conveniently.)
By the way, what makes you say Gateway is slowly dying? I think things like their Profile line offer them more than bundling a PDA. They seem fairly unique. (To the non-apple world.)