Dell officially gets out of smartphone business, Android
It’s been about a year and four months since Dell pulled the plug on the Streak 5, and since then, there has been very little news from the company in terms of its plans for future smartphones. That changed today, though – but it isn’t very good news for fans of Dell’s Streak series of devices.
The head of Dell’s consumer business Jeff Clarke confirmed that Dell is truly getting out of the smartphone business, and is even dropping Android for the time being. According to Clarke, the smartphone business requires “a lot of investments to really be successful,” and Dell seems not to be willing to spend money on them.
When asked about Google’s popular Android operating system, Clarke had this to say: “It’s a content play with Android. Amazon is selling books and Google is making it up with search. So far we couldn’t find a way to build a business on Android.” In other words, Dell wants to have more revenue coming from Android than the money it gets from device sales – and that until that happens, Dell might not be interested in shipping Android devices since it doesn’t view them as particularly profitable.
However, Clarke went on to say that Dell isn’t uninterested in producing devices with Android. Apparently, Dell is working on some Android devices in its labs – but they’re likely not ready at the moment and might not be for some time, until Dell can find a way to get a bit of extra money from the OS.
Are you saddened that, as of right now, Dell will not be producing any more smartphones?
[Forbes]
