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Dell to Get Into Cell Phones in 2006
prostoalex writes "BrightHand looks into the future of Dell Axim PDA line. X30 will be discontinued, X50 will get another update of Windows Mobile, and pretty soon Dell might be entering the cell phone business with PDA+phone Axim combo. The phone line will replaces the X50 model in mid-2006."
The biggest use of a pda is to keep track of appointments, take notes, and hold contact information - all of which my nokia 6230 can do NOW! PDAs are dying.
What we may be seeing is the start of essentially the phone clones. Imagine the offerings from most of the large manufacturers being essentially identical, perhaps three or four models, all looking broadly the same as their competitors equivalents, differing from competitors by battery life, probably running the same firmware. You might get the basic no-frills phone, similar to a Nokia 61xx series, a slightly more advanced colour phone with a camera, a PDA phone that's literally a pen-based PDA with GSM/UMTS built-in, and an expensive slimline phone. That's the future of phones, much as every PC manufacturer produces essentially low-end and high-end PC-clones, differing from competitors by case colour, and laptops.
From a technologists standpoint, it's also depressing. Phones remain a relatively closed platform, with only limited opening up in the form of the occasional J2ME implementation, usually badly implemented and slow, or Symbian/WinCE platform, both of which are designed to be as closed as the phone manufacturer chooses. The idea of being able to get independent development environments, independent convertors and compilers (on an off-topic note: why do we now call compilers "linkers" and use the word "compiler" to refer to code converters? That's just dumb. I used to think it was only tech-illiterates that used it that way around, but it's slipped into normal usage. People: It's a "C convertor", not a "C compiler". You can't get language compilers, compilers compile - Compile (tr.v): To put together or compose from materials gathered from several sources: compile an encyclopedia - object code to produce executables) so people can create new software for their phones and make them genuinely friendly to them is unlikely, and probably going to become less likely the more phones become commodities. In some ways that's ironic, as the opposite happened to personal computing, but in personal computing people were directly buying PCs rather than trying to get them from phone service companies.
Will this essentially be the end of the diversity we see from Nokia's 9xxx series to the Treo to all manner of other technologies? I hope not, but I fear Dell wouldn't be interested if the industry wasn't going in this direction. If it happens, expect Nokia and Sony Ericsson to become also-rans, or else shadows of their former selves, to the Nokias and SEs of today what HP was to the HP of old.
I guess, whatever else, time will tell.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
A company already entrenched in a saturated market (hardware/computer retailer), branching out into an even more saturated market (cell phones)? Sounds like a winning plan there.
HP phones are good but they are VERY expensive
its a no brainer for dell as intel provides the hardware and MS the OS
its what all the support + blackberry people want as you can actually get decent applications written for them
dont cripple them dell allow any sim card to be put in and they will sell by the bucket load
bluetooth (for headphones) and wifi(for corp data) a must
I hope they come to the UK market
regards
John Jones
Good example, but your tech rep's English is too good.
All they need to do is sell them unlocked with 802.11b data and VoIP support. At first they will cost a boatload, but it will help push other manufacturers away from carrier lock in. If anyone can supply data services, I see an entire new market for WiFi to the phone.
If I could cover most of your city with WiFi, would you pay $10 a month for unlimited data at 1MB/s to your phone?
This could be what finally gets me to buy a cell phone. I've held out on phones because they don't do enough else to make me buy one (or they can do things like calendar and note-taking, but I prefer in interface of my day planner), and I've held out on PDAs because they're expensive and also aren't superior to my day planner. But if Dell markets a well-designed phone with serious computing power and a good interface, that may be the killer app that finally drags me kicking and screaming into the market. Here's hoping they can sell real multi-function phones with the quality and price that they've been providing computers at.
Your tickling one of my biggest gripes with cell phones today - carrier specific phones. Maybe one day the hardware will be powerful enough so that software will talk to whatever technology is used. A new technology arrives, great, get a software upgrade instead of new hardware. But this isn't specific to cell phones either - how many 802.11 technologies have you gone through?
The problem is that most cell phones aren't sold at what they're worth. They are sold at a loss, the price being subsidised by the major carriers. This is why the iPod phone between Apple and Motorola is being delayed. No one wants to subsidize it, becase the carriers are being greedy.
:(
As I see it right now, Apple could sell a GPRS phone outright with no problems. Plug in a sim card and you're good to go. The problem is, most people aren't willing to shell out $600 for a phone. $300, maybe, but not $600.
Sprint ("The first to build our own, all digital network from the ground up.") and CDMA technology is stagnating, and to make matters worse, you can't use just any CDMA phone, you have to use one they've approved.
The main reason I'm looking to move to a GPRS carrier when my contract is up. I want a bluetooth phone that will nicely sync with iSync, and for extra credit I want either a native imap client (not a java one, that's what I use now) or native ssh. My Sony-Ericson, Sprint forsaken phone is buggy as all get out. I can't even answer a phone call while in hands-free mode. The call gets garbled.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Yep, blame the guy who is outside of America. It definitely is his fault. What I don't understand is why can't an American company produce a cell phone worth a fuck?
and that move is doing very well. Dell rarely makes mistakes. They do make them but they also make decisions that work very well regardless of industry outlook. Moving into branded printers was decried by many as a waste of time but that hasn't proven so.
/. favorite hardware seller were entering the market the responses would be very different.
Consider their corporate connection and this makes a lot of sense. Where I work is almost now all Dell. It saves time and money to single source many different items. Throwing phones into the mix wouldn't be too much of a stretch. They have established a level of trust with us and many other companies, that can be used to further expand their interest and protect them from being too tightly focused on one industry.
I suspect that if a certain other
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.