Dell's Smartphones
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Dell's Asian smartphonepartnerships come as rumors continue to swirl that Dell is tryingto sync up with China Mobile to offer two smartphones. Thosedevices, which are said to be in the testing phase, are expected tobe based on China Mobile's Open Mobile System (OMS) operatingsystem. OMS is based on Google Android but includes China Mobile'sown applications.
While additional Dell device details weren't availableTuesday, it is believed that Dell will roll out its smartphonesfirst in China, then in the U.S. and Europe.
Speculation about a Dell smartphone kicked into high gearearlier this year, on the back of rumors that the computer makerwas readying devices for launch at the Mobile World Congress inBarcelona, Spain, in February.
While the Mobile World Congress saw no announcements fromDell, the company's CEO did little to quell the speculation thatDell is looking for a piece of the lucrative smartphone pie.
"It is true that we are exploring smaller-screen devices,"Michael Dell not-so-subtly hinted last month during a speech inTokyo. "We don't have any announcements to share today, but staytuned as when we have new news we will share that with you."
At the time, Dell went so far as to add that thesmaller-screen devices would likely be 3G-enabled, which would putthe company in head-to-head competition with mobile heavyweightslike the Apple iPhone 3G, several BlackBerry models and a host ofother devices.
"For the last three years, we have integrated 3G radios intoour notebooks," Dell said. "We already have agreements with manymobile carriers around netbook devices, so it wouldn't beunreasonable to expect that we would have smaller mobile Internetdevices in the near future."
Dell has been said to be working on smartphone prototypes formore than a year, including a device with a touch-screen keyboard,similar to the iPhone, and another with a full slide-out QWERTYkeyboard in the vein of the Google Android-based T-Mobile G1.
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