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Android Handhelds Hardware

Dell Kills Streak 7, Bails On Android Tablets 232

An anonymous reader writes with this news from Network World: "Dell has yanked the Dell Streak 7 tablet computer from its online stores, quietly acknowledging the failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers as the company redirects its tablet focus to combination work/play products. Word of the Streak 7's disappearance follows by a few months the death of the Streak 5, which debuted in summer 2010. The dual-core processor-powered Dell Streak 7 became available in January, marketed as a 4G wireless tablet via T-Mobile's network. Now Dell is directing would-be Streak buyers to Android and Windows Phone smartphones, and pushing a line of Windows Phone tablets for business."
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Dell Kills Streak 7, Bails On Android Tablets

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  • That's about all that needs be said.

    They had a good run, but they are a commodity PC maker and that's about all.

    • Re:Dell in trouble (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sheehaje ( 240093 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @11:30AM (#38280960)

      I'd give them more credit than just a commodity PC maker. They have made some significant acquisitions that run a lot of data centers. Equallogic is a fairly big player in mid-size data centers. They also picked up a fairly sizeable software distribution house in ASAP. Dell's problem has been getting away from what they were once superior at: Support. They still sell support, but don't seem to back it up like they used to, and a lot of people are starting to shy away from that.

  • It's like a high stakes poker game with a full table. Eventually, players bust out because they bet too much on a losing hand. Dell just doesn't have quite the same mix of top-notch industrial design and capable hardware that the top players have. Neither did HP, and so the weak are weeded out. Windows 8 might convince them to buy back in, but really this is Apple, Samsung, and HTC's game.

  • Zune Brown (Score:4, Funny)

    by CMYKjunkie ( 1594319 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @11:27AM (#38280918)
    They should have sold it in Zune Brown and then you could have been the kewl kid on the block with a new Brown Streak!
  • ..from the crud at the bottom of the bargain bucket.

    Good riddance.

  • While Samsung and a whole bunch of other companies have Android devices flying off the shelves, Dell seems unable to do the same. Curious and curiouser.
    • While Samsung and a whole bunch of other companies have Android devices flying off the shelves, Dell seems unable to do the same. Curious and curiouser.

      This a joke? According to the NPD, Samsung has only sold 192,000 tablets in the US (16% of a 1.2 million non apple tablet market.) For such a large country, buying so many ipads, I would say 192,000 is not exactly flying off the shelf.

      Mind you, got to give it to Samsung that they at lest manage to sell that amount. Dell didnt even sell enough to show up in the top 5 list (http://www.npdgroup.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/pressreleases/pr_111122b.) IF Dell happens to be 6th at 8% that would mean they sold 96,00

    • by hitmark ( 640295 )

      The streak7 is a older design. Not even sure it has Market access, as i think Samsung did a fair bit of arm twisting to get that into the Galaxy Tab.

  • The Dell what? Dell's selling a tablet? Honestly Dells marketing department totally dropped the ball on this one. I've been looking around for cheaper android tablets and this NEVER made my radar screen.
  • The problem with android tablets is how to get the volume to make a profit. The iPad sets the high price of a table due to the fact that the industry has spent years positioning apple as the premium retailers with markup of 50-500%. it is therefore expected that anyone else should be able to make a tablet for at least 25% less, if not 80% less as in the case of computer. We are always told that dell can make a better computer than apple for half as much.

    So the fact most tablets are on the order of magn

    • by hitmark ( 640295 )

      I wonder how much Apple gets away with by using the same internals for pad, pod and phone. Got to be some very nice bulk deals there. The others seems to have been stuck with Tegra because of some Google choice rather then being allowed to pick their own poison. Archos seems to be the first company to not use Tegra on a honeycomb tablet, and they are late to the game (but seems willing to update to ICS on existing products rather then try to sell yet another design as seen with ASUS and their transformer pr

  • by shadowrat ( 1069614 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @12:28PM (#38281950)
    Whoa! What? Dell had an Android tablet for sale?
  • When the iPad came out all I heard was how overpriced it was. How you could get a netbook that does 10 times as much for less money. Now I see company after company failing to produce a comparable product at the same price, and a bzillion Slashdot posts about how no one can compete with Apple because they sell the iPad at a loss and make money back from the app store.

  • Close it down? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RyuuzakiTetsuya ( 195424 ) <taiki@@@cox...net> on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @12:48PM (#38282246)

    I hope Michael Dell take his own advice. [cnet.com].

    What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"

  • I read the title as "Dell Streak Kills 7, Bails On Android Tablets" - and here I was expecting to read about some kind of story about a Lithium battery explosion.
  • This is why (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fafaforza ( 248976 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @01:22PM (#38282674)

    This is why people aren't as willing to buy from companies like Dell as opposed to Apple. A few quarters of less than stellar sales and they bail on the whole market and you're left with an unsupported device. Happened with the Zune, HP's tablet, some very good mp3 players of yore. And to add insult to injury, these companies expect to be able to charge the same for their devices as Apple does.

    Gee whiz, I wonder why people choose an iPad where for exactly the same money they could have had an Android wanna-be from a company not completely behind their own product.

    • Gee whiz, I wonder why people choose an iPad where for exactly the same money they could have had an Android wanna-be from a company not completely behind their own product.

      Of course, a couple of years or so ago and some people were using that exact same line of argument to show how the iPhone was always going to dominate the market, and how Android would never be more than a curiosity.

      And we all know how that turned out :)

  • ... does Dell feel the need to make so much stuff? Nobody ever bought their crap MP3 players, I've never seen a Dell phone anywhere,* and now here they are, killing two tablets that were barely a year old. Are there companies who will buy from no one but Dell, and Dell feels that the more stuff they make, the more sales they'll get from these few customers? If that's what they think, it's obviously not working out. A lot of their products have lifespans measurable in months.

    * I admit it's possible I've seen

  • by _KiTA_ ( 241027 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @02:13PM (#38283290) Homepage

    Who all saw this coming? Dell has to constantly try and play catchup with everyone else in the industry, it's pathological at this point. They ruined their reputation for having reliable workstations, they ruined their Gold Tech Support when they started outsourcing it to themselves (the new "Pro Support doesn't state the guy on the other end has to be certified A+ or MCP, just 'English Speaking'"), etc etc. What else do they have at this point but to try to hop on the next big thing and pray they can accidentally do it better than everyone else?

    They need an Executive Enema. Get rid of these guys in suits desperate to have their name on the "next big thing(tm)" and maybe the ones that are left will be able to actually get some work done.

    • Wow, its 2011 and you still haven't figured out how utterly meaning less A+ and MCP are yet?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by _KiTA_ ( 241027 )

        Better an A+ and MCP tech making a living wage of $12 an hour (+benefits) than Dell outsourcing the same jobs to a shell company they own and hiring people off the street for minimum wage (no benefits, no job security, etc).

  • by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @05:41PM (#38285786)

    Dell doesn't know what they are doing, aren't making the KINDS of Android devices that people want, and not at the prices people want.

    Sorry, but that doesn't make "failure of the Android device to catch on with consumers" an accurate statement. The correct statement is "Dell fails at figuring out how to make compelling Android devices that people want". Big difference.

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