Dell: No Smartphones After All
The biggest news out of the D6 Conference is that Michael Dell thinks he could take Steve Jobs in a fight. Gadget-wise, there's not a whole lot of stuff to speak of unless you're obsessed with ever-thinner displays of think that Windows 7 really is going to be arriving within our lifetime. Actually, the biggest “gadget” news is the upcoming absence of a gadget; Gadgetorama caught this little tidbit:
Michael Dell indicated that Dell's future mobile plans were not currently focused on mobile phones but rather on devices that were a little larger than a basic phone and smaller than a PC.
...Which sort of contradicts the latest rumor that Dell was having Quanta make smartphones for them. That rumor itself was in conflict with previous rumors that Dell was alternately interested and not interested in smartphones after they killed off the Axim line of PDAs. In other words, the good money is on Dell making some sort of UMPC with a HSPA or CDMA chip in it to compete with the other “between PDA and PC” devices like the HTC Advantage.
...Come to think of it, didn't last year's All Things D conference also feature a strange amalgam of PC and PDA from a company that's been on the rocks lately? You know, the Foleo? I think we all remember how that turned out...
Update: Well well, take a gander at what Michael Dell had sitting in his bag at the conference: a mysterious subnotebook. Thanks Diana!
