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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."
Dell level 1 tech support is what we need for cell phones.
Are you currently a live human being? Do you have ears? Is the phone placed next to your ear? Is the phone powered on? Yes, sir, I know that you are talking to me this very minute on the phone in question, but I have to ask these questions in order to escalate your call. Once again, is the phone powered on?
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.
The new phone comes with an outsourced # key that connects you directly with their outsourced technical support. Only $4.99 per minute, press 1 for partial-English, all others please hold for the next available representative.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Great...Now I'm going to have to listen to geeks talking about how they upgraded from a cellphone to a dellphone.
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?
I switched on a business show on Fox News just deal with it, OK? They have decent business shows.) over the weekend, and the announcer, in his "what's coming up next" blurb, excitedly said, "you'll be able to watch television on your cell phone soon!" And all I can think about is how intercell handoffs still vastly suck even here in 2005 A.D, half my cell calls sound like they are from a deep sea submersible and how there's still dead zones even in metropolitan Los Angeles.
Why am I supposed to be excited about this? Where's the truly NEW stuff? Say what you will about Tivo, but that was a device that fundamentally changed the way I do things in terms of entertainment. I actually watch less TV more efficiently because of it. I want things that make my life easier, not flashy gadgets that are created simply for the gee-whiz factor.
Maybe I've seen too much. Maybe it's because I design stuff so far beyond things like this that I'm difficult to impress. I dunno... just getting old and pragmatic, perhaps.
Apple is also getting into the phone market.
With in 4 months Apple will release a phone using custom hardware and software that will be years ahead of anything else currently on the market. It will have more features yet be simple to use because of its revolutionary one-button interface.
Within 12 months Dell will release a phone with twice as many features(only a quarter of which actually work), 104-key keypad with 24 programmable hot-keys and an AM/FM radio... for half the price.