Dell Gives Android the Boot, Boots Up More Windows 8

hugheseyau writes "Dell vice chairman Jeff Clarke made a less than shocking announcement at this year's Dell World Conference in Austin. The company is officially giving up on Android phones and tablets. ... So if Dell is giving up on Android, what comes next? The company claims it's doubling down on Windows 8, and the enterprise market."

Comments

Market changing? Not competing successfully?

[kawabago]

Customers disappearing? It's time to turn back the clock and go back to what made your name in the first place. If you're a restaurant, it's a great idea. If you're a technology company, it's suicide. Bye Dell, it was nice while you lasted!

Re:Market changing? Not competing successfully?

[epyT-R]

maybe..but that might suggest that modern day 'business sense' is part of the reason why the economy is tanking. I've seen countless examples of technology companies using the sell-a-turd-as-a-diamond marketing for new products, then, when they don't sell, killing their existing successful products which compete with them, then posting butthurt blogs whining about their lost 'vision' 12 months later as they circle the drain.

It seems most of the effort today is poured into marketing service constrained 'property' instead of selling quality goods that allow customers to own the intrinsic value. So the only way they can compete is to turn up the marketing rhetoric knob to 11 and hope they can grab the largest group of mouth breathers who don't realize what they're (not) getting.. This dynamic range has largely been filled and we're leveling out at +0db with tons of clipping. The exquisite layering of fallacy and appeals to social insecurity in modern advertising has reached mind numbing levels. It seriously can't get much worse than it is now.. It's whitenoise.

The slashdot nerd archetype isn't necessarily not business savvy because he's wrong.. He isn't considered business savvy because he's actually more closely tied to reality than today's average marketing department, corporate officer, or consumer. Now THAT should scare us all.

Re:Market changing? Not competing successfully?

[nightfire-unique]

Android devices are outselling Windows devices 2:1.

Android devices are outselling iOS devices 2:1. Windows device sales appear as a rounding error.

And why?

[LordLucless]

So why dump Android? According to Clarke, “It’s a content play with Android”. “Amazon is selling books and Google is making it up with search.

So, basically, there was competent competition, and Dell's me-toosim wasn't cutting it.

For those who didn't notice

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell made an Android tablet, known as the Dell Streak, it was not a success. Expensive, crap screen, underpowered, cheapy feeling.

So now they're switching to Windows 8, with their expensive underpowered crap screens, cheap feeling tablets, THEY'RE SURE TO BE HUGELY SUCCESSFUL!!!

Methinks they're not fixing the real problem. Android sell in bucket loads and if they couldn't sell a tablet with it, then they needed to refine their tablet designs till they did sell. Change Android for Windows 8, doesn't fix their problems, it just adds another one: no touch apps.

Re:For those who didn't notice

[fermion]

And for those who did not notice, Dell exists only because MS has made it so. Dell cow tows to the shrine of MS, keeps it own margins and quality low so that MS can rake in the cash, while assuming the risk of inventory so that MS does not have to.

Is anyone surprised that Dell is jumping on the MS Surface bandwagon.

Re:For those who didn't notice

[Genda]

Actually I'm guessing someone on the M$ board called up someone on the Dell board and informed them they're now going to now assume the position or pay the price, and keep paying. Dell blinked and now to paraphrase Lewis Black, they had to put on a dress, lipstick, a little eye shadow, some glitter and now they're giving sailors blow jobs. And that... is the future of Dell.

Re:Correction: It will be irrelevant:

[Taco Cowboy]

Eventually, they'll get the hint...

By the time they got the hint, the marketplace would have pulled out the rug out from under their feet ...
 
See what happened to HP or Nokia, or Kodak?

Michael Dell on Apple

[Beer_Smurf]

"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders,"
Michael Dell

Android made phones/tablets?

[hobarrera]

To me, the news is that Dell made phones/tablets. I'd never heard of them before, nor have I ever seen any.
Am I the only one here?

Windows 8 + Enterprise = LOLZ

[millertym]

A strategy focusing on Windows 8 may work. A strategy focusing on enterprise business may work. A strategy focusing on windows 8 as enterprise software is doomed to failure. No company I know of is planning to use Windows 8 on their desk terminals. Ever. It's Windows Vista all over again for business use. That being said, I've heard some good out of touch devices and Windows 8. That is where their focus with windows 8 needs to be, or they are going to continue to tank.

Re:good luck with that

[ArhcAngel]

I've done similar things in the past. The difference here is RT is not an x86 platform. In the past the features were just disabled. In this case they were never there.

Re:Another company bets the boat on Windows

[Hadlock]

Nokia had a hostile takeover by Microsoft, I think Dell's case is that they completely failed to enter the Android market with any sort of innovative or well marketed product. Nokia was doing just fine until they burnt their non-windows phone product lines to the ground.

In other words...

[Dcnjoe60]

In other words, Microsoft made Dell another offer they couldn't refuse by not shipping other operating systems. It's not the first time, but with the public's acceptance of Windows 8, it could be the last.

Re:good luck with that

[epyT-R]

A bit fallacious no? Corporate officers are hardly objective when it comes to choosing IT infrastructure, esp when they have no knowledge of it beyond advertising, slick presentations, and from watching hollywood movies as children.

Anyway, windows' ubiquity might also be a factor in why remote intrusions are so commonplace.

Re:good luck with that

[symbolset]

Please name me a feature that Linux has that Windows doesn't that is useful on the enterprise level.

You can use it any way you want, as much as you want, and you won't fail an audit as long as you don't publish modified code.

Re:good luck with that

[symbolset]

So... is this a suicide note?

Re:You comment is invalid.

[sosume]

"it really *whips* .. the llama's arse." No kicking involved, I'm so sorry.

Re:good luck with that

[gutnor]

they have no knowledge of it beyond advertising, slick presentations, and from watching hollywood movies as children

Big companies have actual requirements and actual businesses to run. If they still run Windows Servers a decade after they first "drank the kool-aid", that means that somehow, Windows is delivering.

Stop with this tiring /. attitude. Not everybody that chose to run a windows server is an incompetent graduate with PHB bosses.

Re:good luck with that

[cornjones]

I used to be proud of over 1 year uptimes until i realized 2 things:
1. you aren't patching enough
2. when the reboot happens and it turns out your initialization script for one of your servers wasn't tested thoughly enough (b/c you never rebooted) you have a big problem. having configured it 6 months ago (timeline from when I learned my lesson) and half remembering which configs are which is going to lead to more downtime. You should really reboot after major (re)configurations to make sure your server comes back into the fold effectively... obviously, this should be during a controlled maintenance window but preventative maintenance still counts as maintenance

Re:good luck with that

[RabidReindeer]

The myth of deep pockets is that they are stupid. They didn't get deep pockets by being stupid. They know value when they see it, and Windows 8 ain't it.

You don't get deep pockets by being stupid, no. But I swear that once you get there, stupid waltzes in the front door.

How else can you explain the infestations of Dogbert-style consultants, over-priced/under-performing product acquisitions, and expensive projects that fail more often than not in the larger enterprises? It's like they took all the money they saved by leveraging their synergies and went looking for ways to piss it away?

Re:good luck with that

[kiwimate]

Yep we run couple hundred windows servers. They require 24x7 baby-sitting. And weekly scheduled reboots lest they run out of juice.

Then your Windows admins don't know what they're doing. If you're not exaggerating - if it truly is the norm for your Windows servers to require perpetual baby-sitting and to be rebooted regularly - I suggest you call in Microsoft for a health check. Depending on your level of agreement, it may be free; if it isn't, the recovered time in man hours will more than make up for it. If you're not exaggerating.

Source: I have been team lead/lead consultant for companies that run hundreds or thousands of Windows servers in 24x7x365 environments. There is simply no excuse in 2012 for weekly rebooting to be the accepted norm.

Yes, it was more common back in the late 90s. But today? No excuse, and I am serious in my suggestion that you call in MS for a health check. It's in their best interest to help you fix whatever shambles is present in your environment that necessitates this.