Dell's Smartphone Rejected — Too Dull

MBCook writes "AppleInsider has an article discussing Dell's attempt to enter the smartphone market, as well as the news that the phone was rejected by carriers as too dull. The article doesn't pull punches: 'Dell's failure to successfully step from the commodity PC business into the mobile handset market should come as no surprise, as smartphones requires expertise in software platform development, consumer design savvy, and portable device engineering, all things Dell has never demonstrated any proficiency in.'"

Re:Dull

[Anonymous Coward]

don't you mean the e?

Who knew Acer had a phone?

[SuperKendall]

More interesting than a boring Dell phone, was a note near the end that Acer had a smrtphone out - one of them is the DX900 [youtube.com], a Windows Mobile phone.

Sorry about the voice...

Re:Who knew Acer had a phone?

[dbcad7]

Good catch.. Google shopping results lead me to believe that this is not selling yet, but coming in April.. It does have some neat specs.. quad band, dual sim with an onboard gps receiver is a combo I have searched for before and not found.. I have found many dual sim with TV tuner (soon to be useless in the US) but none with the GPS.

Re:Apple Insider

[Karlt1]

Uh, does anyone else find it a bit suspect that this is from a site called Apple Insider? For me that completely ruins the credibility of this story. I mean, any smartphone is miles less dull than the generic clamshells and candybars that the telcos keep pushing.

The Apple Insider article and the Slashdot summary also linked here:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/dell-phone-stalled-poor-reception/story.aspx?guid= [marketwatch.com]{E1450208-5E11-4A8F-B726-85A6AFF04E2A}

Re:Apple Insider

[caerwyn]

The first link from Apple Insider is definitely a bit on the biased side. The second link, though, is to MarketWatch, and is a little better on the fact/rant ratio.

Re:G2

[anagama]

Well, if they went ahead with Dell's Alienware cylon model [instablogsimages.com] phone, it might shoot back before exploding. As an aside, it would have been nice if the summary writer linked to a picture, or to an article that linked to a picture, or even linked to an article which linked to an article which linked to a picture.

Re:Phone Economics?

[AvitarX]

But in the end the carriers want the contracts. A few outliers without them is no big deal, but if people could jump around on a whim nobody wins. The fact that if a carrier wins a customer it means 2 years of that customer allows them to spread the cost of acquisition (a fixed cost per/customer)over a longer period of time.

This is reflected in the fact that if you pre-pay, not only do you pay more for the phone, you also pay more for the usage.

When my contract was nearing an end, the tmo was desperate to give me another free/cheap phone and keep the monthly payments coming, rather than not give me the free phone, and have me be a constant risk of leaving.

Was not a niche...

[SuperKendall]

It seems more likely that Dell decided there was not a lot of money to be made in pda's (they have always been a niche market)

Not true, in the golden age of the Palm they were not a niche at all. Tons of people had Palm devices, well outside of any niche...

A true PDA is for sure a niche now, because so much of the usefulness was taken away by cellphones. Dell didn't get in early enough to that party, even though you could see it coming a long way away (Palm did, they just took the wrong actions).