Dell: Smartphones? Not our thing. Go PCs!
The company has ruled out returning to the smartphone market -- where it failed earlier -- and claims that the PC is far from dead.
Dell has bopped on the head any rumors that it may return to the smartphone market in the near future, but remained optimistic on the future of the PC, despite a global manufacturer slowdown.
Dell president of global operations Jeff Clarke told attendees at the Dell World conference in Austin, Texas, that the company still has "long term prospects" for the PC business, and remains "optimistic."
"I look at the middle class as it grows over the next 20 years from 1.8 billion people to 4.9 billion people and the opportunity for PCs there," he said, according to one report. With a combination of the cloud and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trends that continue to tick over in the enterprise space, Dell sees this as an opportunity to help bridge the gap between the blurring of personal and professional devices.
The PC maker has taken an 11 percent drop in revenue year over year, with the company's desktop PC sales taking the greatest knock. Looking ahead to a bleak outlook, the firm's market share is not going to rapidly jump any time soon. Dell's worldwide shipments have fallen by close to 10 percent, while its market share has fallen by 14 percent according to research firm IDC.
That said, this year Dell took another crack with the tablet-building whip to fall in line with the release of Windows 8, and is developing new technologies for both voice and touch technologies in a bid to wean users away from the traditional input methods to post-PC alternatives.
But where PC makers and manufacturers have branched out to the post-PC market with the development of tablets and smartphones, Clarke said that in spite of this shift to the mobile space, Dell will not develop its own smartphone.
Dell pulled out of the smartphone business earlier this year after it said it would eventually start over. Dell's Aero smartphone was a "a huge disappointment," according to CNET, while its Venue lineup "falls short of the competition" and the firm's Streak tablet didn't exactly receive rave reviews.
"We've been really clear about smartphones -- we're not going to do smartphones," Clarke told ComputerWorldUK. "We're not going to be in the smartphone hardware business. We're going to provide smartphone solutions, we're going to be the preferred BYOD provider of solutions in the marketplace," he added.
Instead, Dell will work with what assets it has through acquisitions and in-house development and build out its own BYOD platform with partners for the company's enterprise clients.
The key to Dell's future success may be (in its eyes) the PC, but the market says differently. What is clear, however, is that Dell will continue to make "devices more secure, more manageable, more reliable and durable," through enterprise-ready solutions and business productivity services.
(via ComputerWorldUK)
This story originally appeared at ZDNet's Between the Lines under the headline "Dell: No smartphone from us any time soon."