Dell plans first real home tablet PC for late 2012
updated 03:05 am EST, Wed January 11, 2012
Dell shy on whether home tablet uses W8, Android
Dell is planning a big push into home tablet PCs at the end of 2012, the company's Steve Felice said in an interview late Tuesday. In spite of having tried the mobile OS category with the discontinued Streak 5 and 7, Dell would come back in a "bigger way," ,he told Reuters. He suggested that too many tablet makers, implying itself, had just rushed in and been burned.
"The general failure of everyone that's tried to introduce a tablet outside of Apple" has been a problem, he said. Dell wasn't trying to downplay tablets, but wanted to get in properly.
OS choices weren't definite and could include Android or Windows 8, although CEO Michael Dell implied Windows 8 was more likely given the desire to try and address the business software side that it believed Apple was neglegcting.
Despite what's implied by the interview, Dell isn't new to home-oriented tablets and, along with the Streaks, had the poor-faring Inspiron Duo netbook and tablet hybrid on sale. Dell has never explained its performance, but it has almost always skewed towards full-size tablets for corporate users rather than targeting the home. The decision largely cost it valuable lead time and experience that left it caught off-guard then the iPad arrived.
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Re: "The general failure of everyone that's tried to introduce a tablet outside of Apple..."
And what is it that made iPad successful? Was it the hardware design? Nope. Easy to copy. Just ask Samsung. Was it the specs? Nope. Still only 2 cores, XGA resolution, 512MB RAM. How about the OS? Well, OK, iOS really is good. Custom-tuned for the iPad 2's hardware, a match made in heaven, yadda yadda. But hardware, specs, and OS are just the beginning. So what's the killer feature?
It's the big, wide, deep, robust ecosystem. iTunes + App Store + iCloud + content deals + 3rd party accessories + integration with other Apple devices. It goes on and on. Not to mention that signature Apple ease-of-use. It just works.
Amazon has a robust ecosystem too. That's the real reason why Kindle Fire has locked up the low-end (aka the "Android-end") of the pad market. Not the $200 price tag. Not the open-ishness of Android (especially since the Amazon fork of 2.3 is completely closed and proprietary.)
Dell. Dude. You're getting another nut crushing.