Michael Dell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dell Inc, attends a forum at the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong November 2, 2010. Dell Inc, the world’s No.2 PC maker, expects to launch a significant number of tablet PC models next year, its chief executive said on Tuesday, drawing the product’s growing popularity since the launch of Apple Inc’s iPad.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Dell Inc, the world’s No.2 PC maker, will announce an acquisition related to cloud computing on Tuesday, its chief executive said, while ramping up its tablet PC line to compete with rivals such as Apple.

Speaking at an event in Hong Kong, Michael Dell also said that he had received feedback from developers that it was easier to develop smartphone software using Microsoft’s Windows operating system than Google’s popular free Android system.

“We’re going to have a significant number of new tablets in the next year,” Dell said. “There’re lots of debate about the size of the market, who’s buying these devices, and those questions always emerge when there’s a new form factor.”

Dell did not give any further details of the acquisition, but the company was recently involved in a bidding battle with rival Hewlett-Packard to acquire high-end storage maker 3PAR.

Cloud computing is an industry term that refers to providing software and computing power over the Internet such as web-based email, and has been touted by many tech companies as the next big trend in the PC sector.

Microsoft launched its new operating system for mobile devices earlier this month, in a move that is seen by analysts to be its last chance to catch up with Apple and Google’s Android smartphones after having squandered its early lead.

“What’s interesting about the smartphone space is how it’s changing into a more open-modular system,” Dell said. “It’s staggering that Android has now surpassed Apple in terms of originations and this is happening at a much, much faster rate than what folks had envisioned.”

PC companies have increasingly begun looking to mobile devices and other corporate solutions to diversify away from the heavily commoditized personal computer, where net margins can fall to the low single digits for companies such as Acer.

Dell unveiled a 7-inch tablet PC it calls the Streak in September following a 5-inch model earlier that month, joining rivals such as Samsung Electronics in competing with Apple in the emerging tablet PC space.

SYDNEY—Dell Inc. will launch its seven-inch tablet in the next few weeks and a 10-inch tablet within 6-12 months, Dell Greater China President Amit Midha said Wednesday.

Texas-based Dell has joined a host of computer makers rushing to offer tablets, which are generally smaller than laptops but larger than mobile phones, following the launch of Apple Inc.’s iPad about five months ago. The iPad has a 9.7-inch screen.

Dell Chief Executive Michael Dell briefly flashed a seven-inch device at an Oracle Corp. conference in the U.S. a week ago but didn’t provide a release date.

It was showed off at Oracle World by Michael last week and we’ll be launching very, very soon—within the next few weeks,” Mr. Midha said in an interview.

He said Dell will launch “a whole slew” of new products in the next 6-12 months, including additional three-inch, four-inch and 10-inch devices.

“In fact, very much in the near future we’ll be launching the seven-inch tablet as well as the additional three-inch product,” he said.

Mr. Midha confirmed that the seven-inch tablet will run Google Inc.’s Android smartphone operating system, but added that some of the new products will also run Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system, without naming specific products.

Dell is still considering whether to use Google’s Chrome operating system on its products, he added.

The world’s third biggest maker of computers began selling a five-inch tablet in the U.S. this year and will start selling them in Australia on Friday for 649 Australian dollars (US$628) each through Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. subsidiary Optus. Mr. Midha said Dell intends to sell the five-inch product in China “later this year.”

Last year, Dell announced that it had struck a deal with China Mobile Ltd. to distribute its smartphones in China. Mr. Midha indicated that Dell isn’t considering partnering with any other Chinese telecommunications companies. “I think we’ll continue to cooperate with [China Mobile]. There is nothing new to speak about,” he said.

Dell said last week that it expects its annual revenue to surpass US$60 billion in the current year.

Mr. Midha said China will overtake the U.S. as the company’s biggest PC market by 2012, reiterating that Dell expects the PC market in China to grow by 18%-20%, with Dell increasing its market share.

Dell Inc. Wednesday unveiled its second tablet computer, a move that expands its portfolio of mobile devices and joins the list of competitors for Apple Inc.’s iPad.

The seven-inch tablet will run Google Inc.’s Android smartphone operating system, Chief Executive Michael Dell told an audience at an Oracle Corp. conference in San Francisco. He didn’t provide other technical details or its expected release date.

Representatives of the Round Rock, Texas, company didn’t immediately respond to requests for more details.

The move comes roughly five months after Apple began selling its iPad, igniting consumer interest in the emerging tablet computer category. Apple sold more than 3.3 million iPads in its first quarter of sales, while a host of other computer makers are rushing similar devices to the market.

Dell released its first tablet device, dubbed the Streak, earlier this year in Europe before releasing it in the U.S. last month. That device has a five-inche screen—half the size of the iPad’s display—can make and receive calls, and runs Android.

The $299 Streak’s impact on Dell’s financial performance is expected to be muted. Shortly after its debut, Dell said initial sales were “interesting, exciting, but immaterial to Dell’s $60 billion in revenue.”

Mr. Dell said Wednesday the five-inch Streak would be available at Best Buy Co. stores soon.

Dell has indicated that it is willing to take chances in the tablet computer market. In June, Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said in an interview, “We’ll have a series of these devices,” adding that low development costs allow the company to test different form factors on the market.

Dell’s tablet computer, due out in a few months, will be the first of several, company says.
Hype over the iPad doesn’t mean other players aren’t in the tablet game
Dell’s tablet, tentatively called the Mini 5, due out “in a couple of months.”
Company says tablet will be the first of several, which could have screen size to rival iPad
Analyst says device will need services to back up the hardware

Say the words “tablet computer” and ten bucks says it’s Apple’s iPad that springs to mind. But that doesn’t mean other companies aren’t busy building their own version of a touch-enabled, multimedia-sporting, slab of portable computing goodness.

Dell’s first effort at a tablet will be the Mini 5 (a name that is still in beta) — a slice of plastic and glass with a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen that according to Michael Dell will debut “in a couple of months.”

The Mini 5 will sport a 5-megapixel camera on the back, a separate front-facing camera that can be used for video conferencing, a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1-GHz processor.

The 5-inch screen also means it will be be closer to the Sony PSP in its form factor than the longer legal notepad design of the iPad.

The Mini 5 will run the latest version of Google’s Android operating system, version 2.0 or higher. And instead of the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad, Dell’s tablets will support the 16:9 ratio. Widescreen films anyone?

“It’s a device optimized for media consumption,” Neeraj Choubey, general manager of the tablets division at Dell told Wired.com. “It will offer the full Web-browsing experience so you have something that you are holding in your hand that replaces everything the smartphone does and takes on quite a bit of the features of a laptop.”

The Dell 5 Mini will also just be the first in a series.

“We are going to have a family of tablets,” says Choubey. “The first one is a 5-inch screen but we want to scale that up to a variety of screen sizes.”

That means future versions of the Mini 5 could have larger screens that will be closer in size to the iPad.

Dell wouldn’t comment on pricing, beyond saying it will be “competitive,” or when it will launch this year. Apple’s iPad ranges from $500 to $830.

With the launch of iPad in January, the tablet PCs are going through a renaissance.

Though PC makers have offered slates and convertible notebooks for nearly a decade, consumers haven’t bought them in droves. With its 9.7-inch display, sleek design and Apple’s relentless hype, the iPad could alter the way we experience mobile computing. And Dell knows this.

Three years ago, Dell started expanding its product line to include mobile products. Dell smartphones are now sold in Brazil and China and it hopes to bring a version to North America. Meanwhile, the company set up a tablet division, and three weeks ago Choubey joined Dell from venture capital firm Venrock.

As he sees it, the Mini 5 will offer the apps that are available on smartphones, a set of specialized tools and programs for business users, a strong movies-and-music experience and Web surfing — Flash and all included. Take that, iPad.

Along with the apps on the Mini 5, users will have quick access to e-mail, YouTube, Amazon’s MP3 store for music, as well as spreadsheet, presentation maker and documents. It will also support voice recognition.

And these are characteristics that will be common to all tablets from Dell.

Still it will be a hard sell to consumers, says Van Baker, an analyst with research firm Gartner.

“If all you are bringing to the market is another media-playing or handheld-gaming device, then it’s not going to work,” he says. “It’s all about the services you have behind the device.”

And that’s where the iPad scores, with its strong developer ecosystem and 100,000 apps, along with iTunes and iBooks, says Baker.

Dell is betting it can offer that and add a compelling value proposition for business users: a promise that its tablet won’t just be a coffee-table device but instead a powerful productivity tool.

“There’s no reason why you can’t use the tablet to take notes in class,” he says.

Dell will also offer services such as syncing that will allow users to move music, documents and other data between their PC and tablet easily.

“At a very basic level, you would have a service that will share content across the devices seamlessly and have it in the cloud,” says Choubey.

Dell also hopes to draw on the Android ecosystem by offering developers the opportunity to port their Android apps to the Mini 5 and its successors.

For the Mini 5, though, its PlayStation Portable-like form factor could be a big drawback, says Baker. The Dell Mini 5 is closer in its looks to gadgets better known as mobile internet devices or MIDs, a category that has been languishing despite products from companies such as Lenovo and Archos.

“If the Dell Mini 5 is this small and it is pocketable, then why isn’t it a phone?” asks Baker. “If I am going to carry a second device, it better have something that’s a significant advantage over what I can do with my phone. With the iPad, the value proposition is a much larger display.”

But Choubey says the innovation is not just in the form factor but also in the business model. Dell will work with carriers to bundle inexpensive data plans for the Mini 5 and other tablets.

“That type of model — the way iPad was able to do with AT& T — will become more prevalent with these tablet devices,” he says. “It allows the carrier to increase number of devices per user.”

Apple introduced a $15 for 250 MB, or an unlimited $30 a month, no-contract data plan for use with the iPad.

A team of Dell engineers has released a very unofficial version of Google’s Chrome OS for use on the PC manufacturer’s Mini 10v netbooks.

Dell isn’t on the official list of Chrome OS hardware partners. And the company’s founder and CEO believes his netbooks go sour after 36 hours. But you now have ready access to an early open source incarnation of Google’s browser-happy “operating system” that’s been tweaked specifically for those 36-hour machines.

With a post to the company’s Community Blog, Dell technology strategist Doug Anson tells the world that he and “some other Dell folk” have managed to get the open source ChromiumOS up and running on a Mini 10v. And he kindly provides a link to their USB key image file.

Anson’s description of Google’s “operating system” is far from surprising. “Without a network connection, ChromiumOS is not very interesting,” he says. “With a network connection, ChromiumOS shines.” He and his fellow Dell folk have managed to tap the Mini 10v’s Broadcom WiFi adapter, but there are (many) caveats. “It’s definitely not perfect (read: highly experimental, untested, unstable, yada yada…,” Anson says, “but it does appear to function.”

He warns that the network manager may need 5 to 10 minutes to “see” available access points and that the manager and its underlying components “can easily break or get hung.”

“When in doubt,” he says, “reboot and give it another try.”

And you’ll have to reboot by hand. The image lacks a reboot/shutdown option, leaving the power button as your only option.

Anson also warns that the entire image “comes with absolutely no support of any kind and is to be considered highly experimental and completely unstable.” But he does confirm that Google’s “operating system” boots quickly. Though he hasn’t quite duplicated the 7 second boot time claimed by Google, he does manage 12 seconds on his Mini 10v.

Google Chrome OS is still a year away from its arrival on commercial machines, but last week, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory released an early open source snapshot under the ChromiumOS moniker. Google’s says its engineers will work with external programmers on the same code tree, but we’re assuming the real work will take place behind closed doors.

Dell officially hatched its grand smartphone plan and it’s focused on emerging markets and the Android operating system. The company confirmed its plans to launch smartphones in China and Brazil.

In a statement Friday, Dell said it will distribute its Mini 3 smartphones through China Mobile, the wireless behemoth in China. In Brazil, Dell has inked a deal with Claro, which has more than 42 million customers.

The strategy makes a lot of sense. In the U.S. Dell would face a crowded field. In so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) the growth pie is big enough to support multiple players and new entrants such as Dell. For instance, China Mobile has 500 million customers.

The other notable wrinkle here is that Dell’s Mini 3 smartphones run on Android. The Mini 3 will be available in late November on China Mobile and by the end of the year on Claro. In a blog post, Dell said:

With Android, we’re designing these initial Mini 3 phones to provide power, flexibility and customization to both our customers and to carriers around the world.

It remains to be seen whether Dell can be a smartphone contender, but if it’s going to be successful the emerging markets are the best place to start. Indeed, Ron Garriques, president of Dell’s consumer group, is familiar with emerging market turf since he led Motorola’s efforts abroad.

Dell said the moves solidify its “continued expansion into mobile Internet products.” Dell already has a bevy of netbook deals with various carriers around the world. Rumors of Dell’s move into smartphones have circulated for months. Dell CEO Michael Dell talked about the company’s smartphone plans on an earnings conference call in August.

There are rumors that the PC maker plans to enter the smartphone market, but it may have a hard time muscling its way into the crowded field
By Roger L. Kay

Now that Dell is signaling its intention to vault into the smartphone market, industry watchers are asking whether the company can make a serious run. Don’t bet on it.

In August, Dell (DELL) announced plans to release a smartphone in China. In early October, it hinted at plans to enter the U.S. smartphone market, without going into detail.

Dell is nothing if not conservative, and it continues to waffle about exactly what it has planned. The company appears to have chosen to enter the smartphone market in as low-risk way as possible, partnering with established industry giants AT&T (T) and Google (GOOG). But it won’t say when its products will arrive or how they’ll work. Part of the reason for this tentative stance is that the stakes are extremely high.

Fallen From Its Perch
Dell was once a formidable rival to other PC makers, and a Wall Street darling, thanks to its ability to produce more cheaply, and sell more plentifully, than competitors. Now it has fallen from its perch.

When PC industry growth shifted from business desktops to notebooks sold to consumers, Dell was out of its element. It had trouble managing the notebook supply chain and making the kind of smartly designed machines consumers wanted. The company has taken steps to remedy those ills in recent years. Its computer designs now rival even those of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), the industry leader in consumer notebooks.

But it’s still playing catchup in the handheld computer market. It might be asking too much for a company known for making boring business PCs to leap to the front of the pack in the smartphone market. Dell may not have the DNA for this kind of reinvention.

Tablets on the Way
A few years ago, mobile computing pretty much meant carrying a notebook computer. Then, Research In Motion (RIMM) put the office in our pockets with its hit BlackBerry device, and Apple (AAPL) opened the smartphone market to a whole new class of consumers with the iPhone. The iPhone lets it users read Web pages, send e-mail and text messages, talk on the phone, and run a huge number of productivity and entertainment applications. Pretty much the only thing it doesn’t let users do is create documents, and that idea was always a nonstarter in handheld computing anyway.

I saw these developments coming in 2005, when I formed Endpoint Technologies. I had been the PC analyst at market researcher IDC, but I suspected the PC’s heyday was drawing to a close. At Endpoint, I decided to consult on computing trends that encompassed all manner of computing devices, including smart phones, netbooks, tablet computers, and even home theater systems.

The smart phone may not be the pinnacle of handheld computing’s evolution. Even now, Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple are said to be creating new kinds of tablet machines. But for now, phones are where the action is in personal computing. The PC industry sells about 250 million to 300 million units a year, but the overall cell-phone market is at least twice as large.

No Zing After All
And while PC prices continue to fall, the prices of popular smartphones are rising, and so are the carriers’ average revenues per subscriber. Data plans make up an ever greater percentage of smartphone revenue, and nearly everyone in the computer industry is trying to get in on it.

Which brings us back to Dell. It’s tried to enter new markets, including mobile music, and had hired ex-Apple executive Tim Bucher, who has since departed Dell. The Round Rock (Tex.) company has planned to bring out a portable music player called the Zing to compete with Apple’s iPod, but it never made it to market.

In 2007, Dell hired Ron Garriques, the force behind Motorola’s (MOT) Razr cell phone. Two and a half years later, all we’re getting is rumors of Dell phones.

Adding Something to the Mix
This is a big, important market, and Dell can ill afford to get it wrong. By agreeing to sell phones that run Google’s Android operating system, Dell wants to leverage Google’s software development expertise and winning brand name. By partnering with AT&T, Dell sets itself up with an experienced operator.

Yet unlike Apple, Dell doesn’t bring its own flair to the phone market. Dell is good at assembling and distributing hardware. But unless it can add some interesting intellectual property to the mix, it’s hard to see how it can muscle its way into a meaningful place in the smartphone market.