Dell's Smartphone Rejected — Too Dull 174
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.'"
Phone Economics? (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I don't really understand the economics behind handsets. I've always bought my own and never through the service provider. Thanks to AT&Ts following the GSM standard, I just put my SIM chip in whatever phone I want and I'm good to go.
What is the likelyhood that some manufacturer comes out with some compelling device and sell it directly to the consumers? The consumers use it in spite of the desires of the network operators.
Re:Smartphones? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always said a "smartphone" will never cut the mustard for me. I don't care how many PDA-like features it has, the PDA features will always be inferior to a real PDA. What I want is a PDA with phone features like voice and text. A netbook with a voip service would sum up the functionality I want, though I'd want it in a smaller form factor.
Re:Is it sad (Score:5, Interesting)
Back to the story. Dell (as in Micheal Dell) needs to walk down to the corner where they are working on Mobile phones, bitchslap everyone for a little while then remind them what Dell's main asset is.
People like to buy stuff from them. If Dell started to sell and support Apple PCs as just another product line, sales of Apple PCs would climb.
This is no accident:
#1. In some places, (Jamaica) Dell provides onsite support and a warehouse of spare parts that's already cleared customs and can thus be delivered in compliance with the Next business day or even the 4 hour response Warranties.
#2. Dell still has the best designed site for customizing and buying Computer hardware.
In simple terms Dell doesn't need it's own products. It just needs decent quality stuff with the Dell brand on it. Let someone else design and build the Dell phone. Ignore the carriers (except for making sure the phone is compatible) and start selling unlocked Dell phones for whatever they cost to make and deliver plus a markup.
Once the carriers see the numbers delivered whoever has the fewest on it's network will go to Dell on bended knee to get a bundling deal.
Re:Apple Insider (Score:3, Interesting)
Appleinsider used to be (and probably still is) the best *editorial* apple rumor website. However, more recently their best writer (Prince McLean) has become more like Daniel Eran Dilger of RouglyDrafted in his style and bias. In the websites "Road to Snow Leopard" series about OS 10.6, occasionally McLean would cite Dilger concerning random tidbits of Mac history, but not often enough to make the articles bad like Dilgers self-citing poorly written biased excuses for articles are. More recently though, McLeans articles are becoming equally snarky and has a lot of shots against apple competitors just like Dilgers articles, making me think that McLean is a just a pseudonym/sockpuppet for Dilger (which would be further supported by the fact that Dilger posts all of McLeans editorials on his site).
Either way its unfortunate whether its true or not, because it means either that McLean is not Dilger but is being influenced by one of the most pompous worst apple editorialists in the worst possible way, or that McLean is Dilger, and that Dilger actually has the potential to write decent articles (like McLeans earlier writing on the site), but instead writes the trash like what normally ends up on Roughly Drafted.
Re:carriers don't care (Score:1, Interesting)
Doesn't ATT have pre-paid too? (Score:2, Interesting)
I do as the grandparent poster, bringing my own phone with T-Mobile USA, but I use a pre-paid SIM that cost me about $8 to start the account and about $16/month in usage fees.
I agree, if you are a heavy user and have no intention to switch carriers or reduce usage during the contract period, a well chosen contract with a "free" phone may be cost effective. But I crunched the numbers when I was in such a situation, and found that after a year or so I was wasting money because I had signed on to the 1000 minute/month plan and using the phone gratuitously since "the minutes were already purchased".
I migrated to cheaper plans with a non-subsidized phone, and eventually to pre-paid. My lifestyle changed to adapt to the new cost structure, and I make better use of my office phone, coffee and beer meetings, and email or IM to replace many of the useless mobile phone calls. Now the mobile is just used to synchronize real life events, rather than to replace them, and I am happier all around.