Positioning for the future
It's becoming increasingly apparent that 2010 will be the year of the converged device - be that a notebook with embedded 3G, a smartbook or a smartphone with greater computing functionality than ever before.
Well documented on this site is the convergence of the semiconductor industries, with Intel and NVIDIA moving down from PCs into the embedded space and the ARM ecosystem counterattacking from the opposite direction. But increasingly, the battle is being joined by OEMs.
With the PC market more mature and consolidated than the smartphone one, we expect to see more PC OEMs moving into smartphones than phone-makers dabbling in PCs - although there are always exceptions.
The most pro-active OEM so far has been Acer, which has already moved on to its next generation of smartphones incorporating cutting-edge technologies like Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip. With Acer having recently stolen the crown of world's number two PC maker from Dell, it stands to reason that Dell is taking the smartphone proposition very seriously.
Last month saw Dell launch its Mini 3i (pictured below) in China and wsj.com recently reported that Dell is undergoing a major corporate restructure in order to create a business unit dedicated to smartphones. It will be headed-up by Ron Garriques, currently president of Dell's consumer division, who worked at Motorola before joining Dell.
While Dell may be playing catch-up with Acer in the converged market, it seems to be putting more effort into smartphones than its biggest rival - HP - despite the latter having more of a heritage in this market.
