Dell fuels smartphone rumours – again

It must be summer, as rumours of Dell working on a smartphone have resurfaced. Although such rumours do the rounds seemingly every year or so, this one carries more weight as it comes from no less a figure than Ronald Garriques – president of Dell’s consumer division, and ex VP of Motorola’s cell phone division.

In an interview with analysts, Garrique said that Dell was in talks with the “…top three to four” telecoms companies to launch a range of handsets, including 4″ smartphones and 12″ netbooks running on Android.

Although al this sounds rather tasty, however, there may be a sting in the tail…

Dell has been in talks with telecoms operators before about releasing a smartphone, but it was turned down as the smartphone was deemed to be too clunky. If it was anything like what you can see from the pic (which may not be the actual design that was turned down, but which should at least be representative of what Dell were offering), I’m not surprised; it does look a little – utilitarian!

Rather than sprinkling some magic design dust all over their new smartphone, though, Dell seem only to have looked further afield and pitched the same dodgy design to a range of Chinese telecoms companies, who’ve apparently been very excited by the new phones.

Reading between the lines, then, it seems that Dell are about to launch a new range of smartphones and netbooks, but only in China, at least to begin with. If they do come to other markets such as Europe, the range will probably be sold in Staples or PC World, marketed as ye olde PDAs, where they’ll sit gathering dust on an unwanted corner of a shelf at the back of the store.

Quite sad really!

[Source: Cellular News via Unwired View]