Fri Jan 30, 2009 10:40 am
Dell is preparing to enter the cell phone arena as early as next month, to increase sales as its crumbling PC business struggles in the recession.
The world's No. 2 maker of PCs has had a group of engineers designing prototypes for more than a year from an office in the Chicago area, focusing on smartphones built on Google's Android operating system and Microsoft's Windows Mobile software.
One model features a touch screen but no physical keyboard, similar to Apple's iPhone. Another is a handheld with a keypad and that slides from underneath the screen.
Dell has not finalized its plans and may still abandon them.
Smartphones, high-end mobile phones that have many of the functions found traditionally on PCs, are the fastest growing segment of the cell phone industry.
Dell's smartphone push would come as the company attempts to remake itself following its fall as the world's biggest PC maker to Hewlett-Packard two years ago.
Dell has seen smartphones as an opportunity since early 2007, when it hired Ron Garriques, the former cell phone chief at Motorola, to re-energize its consumer products division. However, under a non-compete agreement, Garriques was barred from working on mobile phones until February 2009.
The smartphone development team spent much of last year meeting with phone component suppliers, phone software companies, and Asian phone manufacturers.
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