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!

Tough to believe, but it's been over a year since Dell announced that they were killing off the Axim PDA line. When that happened, we noted that Dell had also hired on Ron Garriques, a former Motorola executive. That move seemed to hint that Dell was thinking about starting up a line of Windows Mobile Smartphones. Smartphones obviously make a lot more sense in today's market, as PDAs are pretty much all but dead these days.

Throw another log into that rumor fire, as Digitimes is reporting that Dell has partnered up with manufacturer Foxconn. The supposed products are to be “GPS PDAs and smartphones.”

If it's true, Dell will have its work cut out for them - competing with the likes of HTC isn't going to be easy.

Matthew Miller points to an IDC study which shows that handheld shipments - like the traditional Palm Pilot or Windows Mobile Not-a-smartphone-of-any-sort - have dropped just over 40% year over year. This while the smartphone market is red-hot and well on its way to getting white-hot. Dell already dropped their Axim line and Microsoft has named their non-smartphone WM6 edition "Classic." "Classic" as in "Really? Why are you bothering?"

Say goodnight, handhelds. "Goodnight handhelds."

According to IDC's Worldwide Handheld QView, vendors shipped just over 900,000 handheld devices in the first quarter of 2007, 36.3% less than the previous quarter and 40.6% less than the same quarter a year ago.

Read: IDC - Press Release

JeffKirvin.net's story on Dell's decision to stop making the Axim PDA has two bits of analysis that I full agree with. First: The unconnected PDA is well and truly dead. He writes they may as well have called WM6 Classic "Windows Mobile 6 Vintage" - I'd take that one step further and call it "WM6 Vestigal". WM6 Classic is just like the appendix - it was necessary once, it's not anymore, but it's not been entirely eliminated yet.

Anyway, the other point here is that Dell recently hired a Moto Exec, which should have screamed "smartphone" to me at the time but, for some reason, didn't. Let's hope that Dell follows their old Axim strategy of making top-of-the-line devices instead of their MP3 strategy of rebranding so-so devices.

Given that they just hired former Motorola handset chief Ron Garriques [...] I don’t doubt at all that we’ll see a Dell answer to the Moto Q in due time. But it won’t be called an Axim. The time for Windows Mobile Classic devices has already passed.