Dell Kills Streak 7, Bails On Android Tablets

An anonymous reader writes with this news from Network World: "Dell has yanked the Dell Streak 7 tablet computer from its online stores, quietly acknowledging the failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers as the company redirects its tablet focus to combination work/play products. Word of the Streak 7's disappearance follows by a few months the death of the Streak 5, which debuted in summer 2010. The dual-core processor-powered Dell Streak 7 became available in January, marketed as a 4G wireless tablet via T-Mobile's network. Now Dell is directing would-be Streak buyers to Android and Windows Phone smartphones, and pushing a line of Windows Phone tablets for business."

Comments

This is Dell

[Anonymous Coward]

Same stuff they will always pull as long as they accept MS as their supreme overlord

Re:This is Dell

[trum4n]

People who buy android typically are smart enough to NOT buy a dell.

Re:This is Dell

[vlm]

I'm sure it had nothing to do with the almost complete lack of consumer interest in Android tablets.

Its all in the price. Apparently a tablet that is worth about a quarter of an ipad sells really good at a quarter of an ipad price. Trying to sell "not as good as an ipad" for same or higher price doesn't work so well.

Re:This is Dell

[squiggleslash]

More likely it had to do with a complete lack of consumer interest in small, low resolution, pre-Honeycomb, Android tablets. Everyone from Lenovo to Archos is producing better tablets in that price and specification range.

I still don't know why people want tablets. I have a Lenovo 10" myself and don't see what the big deal is. But I can honestly say that there's no way people who want them are going to settle for something like the Streak. It doesn't make sense on any level.

Re:This is Dell

[the linux geek]

People who buy Android are typically people upgrading from a feature phone to a cheap smartphone.

Re:This is Dell

[Anonymous Coward]

People who buy Android are typically people upgrading from a feature phone to a cheap smartphone.

No doubt true for some, but otherwise this is pure conjecture.

Re:This is Dell

[ArhcAngel]

You're half right. While it is true that consumers have an almost complete lack of interest in Android they have an equal lack of interest in IOS. Consumers want gadgets but only if the gadgets high techiness is able to get out of the way and the consumer can do cool things without knowing too much. This is where IOS excels and Android has faltered...until now. While handset OEMs have focused on prettying up the interface to distinguish themselves Barnes & Noble flat out covered up the underlying Android base and focused on User Experience as much as UI. They also hit a price point that was palatable for more of the masses by leaving out the ubiquitous front and rear cameras and a few other bells and whistles and not skimping on the screen or touch interface. Of course the Android community likes to point out how easily hackable the device is but I'm reasonably sure total sales were not overly impacted by this fact. The success of the NC got Amazon's attention and Bezos & Co. have now launched the Kindle Fire. For all intents and purposes a BlackBerry PlayBook without cameras and running Android. The Fire has taken the NC concept and gone even further. By tying the Fire to amazon's cloud services they seek to capture the kind of repeat business Apple has using iTunes. For /. aficionados these devices are toys but for Joe Average these are just what the Dr. ordered. And at $199 entry point they are right at impulse buy territory.

Re:This is Dell

[shutdown -p now]

Asus is selling 300k units per month of theirs. Lack of interest? Just because it doesn't have a pre-existing audience that would happily buy it even if it was a turd in a white box with Apple logo on it, doesn't mean there's no interest.

Streak failed because it was just plain not good. It shipped with Android 2.2 (not even 2.3), and they have only started rolling out Honeycomb in October - while all their competitors had Honeycomb tablets selling for months.

Re:This is Dell

[BitZtream]

Yea, having standards of quality and user experience is nothing to brag about.

Re:This is Dell

[BitZtream]

My iPhone - When you show me one Android device that doesn't have OBVIOUS UI lag in scrolling, then ... and ONLY then will I even consider the idea that Android may eventually one day be comparable to iOS. If the OS is incapable of smooth scrolling, its a shitty OS, I don't care WHAT it is under the hood or who's fault it is. And I'm sure you'll (or some other fanboy) name off some device that 'scrolls perfectly' and it won't, you'll just be oblivious to the fact that you've never seen it done right.

My Mac Book - When purchased, Dell, HP, IBM, Sony did not offer a laptop with the same hardware for the same price, sorry to burst your bubble, but not everyone buys $250 el cheapo netbooks. And the only place I can get a good Unix desktop.

My Mac Mini Server - Simply won't find anything with this power in this form factor and this OS, which fits my how perfectly.

Time Capsule/Airport Base Station - You can find stuff that does basically the same thing ... when it works ... and when you aren't having some sort of issue with their shitty software ... No, in fact there is nothing that compares to a Time Capsule.

Now I realize fully that I could spend far less cash and cobble together all of this shit on my own with a bunch of OSS software, but it wouldn't work nearly as well, and I'd have to maintain it ... worry about upgrades, reintegrating software, getting everything to play nicely together. I could spend hours a month just keeping up with updates ...

Or

I just buy something that doesn't suck ass and works well together.

Real peple who code their own kernals and IP packets no better!

What are you like 12 years old? Dude I have real shit to do. I'm sorry you're life is so boring and poor that you think hand writing an IP packet is something to be proud of, let me give you a hint ... it isn't. Neither is writing your own kernel for no other reason than to do it. I most certainly have the capability to do so, and in fact have done so on more than one occasion ... WHEN I NEEDED my own kernel for a microcontroller or to simulate some bad packets for testing a network stack.

I do not however go around acting like I'm bad ass because I can do something that every intelligent person uses a computer to do automatically. You're bragging about being able to do something by hand that EVERYONE ELSE in the world realized they didn't want to do by hand and so they automated it ... If you were nearly as hard core as you'd like to pretend, you'd be using a can-and-string system to communicate rather than all these computers that simplify things for you.

In short, you're an idiot.

Re:This is Dell

[Nemyst]

Fuck this absolutely stupid argument.

Do you really think all those tablet manufacturers make money from showing big numbers? No, they make money from selling, and if it doesn't sell, they pull it, just like Dell did. The same argument was raised about Android smartphones, but oddly enough we don't hear it all that much nowadays.

Re:This is Dell

[vlm]

Or to put it in a different way, people are not willing to spend more on a lesser known quantity. Lets face it, Apple have become very well known the last couple of years...

Folks in the PC market were trained for years that "yeah an intel mac is just a PC but you pay twice the cost of the hardware to get the OSX software".

OK... for the sake of this argument I'll say I believe that. Personally I think it's wrong, but its a very popular viewpoint. I'll run with it and pretend.

So, the $400 ipad comes out. I've been trained that means the hardware costs $200 and you're paying $200 for the fancy apple software. OK here comes this android thing that is all free and open and stuff. That means I'll still be paying $200 for the hardware, but it'll be free software like linux and so I expect to pay $200 for this android tablet. What you say? List price $600 for the android tablet? F it, I'm not paying any more than $250 for it at most, I'm getting a "fairer" deal with the ipad.

Actually this is a pretty good question. How come ipads are not dramatically more expensive than android tablets? A kindle Fire should cost about as much as a "Regular old Kindle".. right? Its just a different software load, at least to a non-technical user. But no, its like twice as much... F that, I'm either buying a plain Kindle or a full fledged ipad. Remember the market placement disaster of the Edsel?

Re:Dell in trouble

[sheehaje]

I'd give them more credit than just a commodity PC maker. They have made some significant acquisitions that run a lot of data centers. Equallogic is a fairly big player in mid-size data centers. They also picked up a fairly sizeable software distribution house in ASAP. Dell's problem has been getting away from what they were once superior at: Support. They still sell support, but don't seem to back it up like they used to, and a lot of people are starting to shy away from that.

Revenue model

[Dan East]

Well, this pretty much indicates that, at least when it comes to tablets, you cannot make money off of the hardware alone. iPad is still the exception, because it literally defined the market. However, Apple makes so much money off of the App store that they could undoubtedly sell the hardware at a loss and still profit overall. They just don't need to - at least not at this point.

Amazon's Kindle Fire is the only real competition, the reason being that Amazon is an established content provider, and just like Apple, they have their own closed App marketplace that they also profit off of. How can Dell, HP, Motorola, HTC compete in this scenario, when the only thing they can make money off of is the hardware? Their only chance is to partner with someone who does have the content distribution infrastructure, but it seems that chance has already passed.

Re:Revenue model

[tlhIngan]

Well, this pretty much indicates that, at least when it comes to tablets, you cannot make money off of the hardware alone. iPad is still the exception, because it literally defined the market. However, Apple makes so much money off of the App store that they could undoubtedly sell the hardware at a loss and still profit overall. They just don't need to - at least not at this point.

Amazon's Kindle Fire is the only real competition, the reason being that Amazon is an established content provider, and just like Apple, they have their own closed App marketplace that they also profit off of. How can Dell, HP, Motorola, HTC compete in this scenario, when the only thing they can make money off of is the hardware? Their only chance is to partner with someone who does have the content distribution infrastructure, but it seems that chance has already passed.

Apple's revenues from iTunes is far lower than the revenues from the hardware. Apple simply does not run iTunes for huge profits, and if it wasn't to sell hardware, would promptly abandon it.

I mean, 30% revenue means less than 30% profit margin after expenses (servers, hosting free content, iCloud, payment processing, etc). I think Apple only took around $1.5B profit from iTunes, and that includes apps, music, books and movies.

I believe the device (iPod, iOS) profit was 20 times that in the same period. Even Mac profit was an order of magnitude higher. than that. It's all in the Apple revenue filings. iTunes just doesn't make more than pocket change for Apple. There's not much of a loss Apple can take on hardware to be made up through iTunes.

Amazon's selling hardware to sell content. Apple's selling content in order to sell hardware (has been true since 2003 when the iTunes Music Store opened). The two can't have more opposite business models. (And Google's offering stuff for free to sell ads). You can see it in the device breakdowns - Apple's hardware really only costs $300 or less to make, while Amazon's basically selling at cost.

And HTC, Samsung, LG, etc seem to be doing fine selling hardware, as does Apple.

The only thing Apple and Amazon have in common is they sell "the whole experience" - devices with the ability to get content easily. Why they offer content may vary, but they know if they make it convenient, people will buy (it's how iTunes became the dominant force in music sales) and gives a lot of legitimacy to the stuff. (People back then accused Apple of enabling music piracy - Apple proved the music industry was Doing It Wrong(tm)).

The other content with hardware guys in the game are Barnes and Noble and Kobo. I don't think the Nook Color is sold at a loss given how B&N seems to let that tablet be hacked trivially.

And nevermind the "success" of such greats like RIM (Blackberry App World), HP (remember WebOS? They had an app store?) who also mixed the hardware-with-content offerings.

tl;dr - Apple doesn't make much money off iTunes - see their last earnings report and hardware sales consistently outdo iTunes sales by wide margins.

I'm not even being facetious when i say...

[shadowrat]

Whoa! What? Dell had an Android tablet for sale?

This is why

[fafaforza]

This is why people aren't as willing to buy from companies like Dell as opposed to Apple. A few quarters of less than stellar sales and they bail on the whole market and you're left with an unsupported device. Happened with the Zune, HP's tablet, some very good mp3 players of yore. And to add insult to injury, these companies expect to be able to charge the same for their devices as Apple does.

Gee whiz, I wonder why people choose an iPad where for exactly the same money they could have had an Android wanna-be from a company not completely behind their own product.

Re:Show of hands?

[_KiTA_]

Better an A+ and MCP tech making a living wage of $12 an hour (+benefits) than Dell outsourcing the same jobs to a shell company they own and hiring people off the street for minimum wage (no benefits, no job security, etc).