

Dell Gives up on Android, Doubles Down on Windows 8 - justinbkerr
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/dell_calls_it_quits_gives_android123

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Bill_Dimm
_“It’s a content play with Android”. “Amazon is selling books and Google is
making it up with search. So far we couldn’t find a way to build a business on
Android.”_

Yet, Samsung seems to be doing just fine.

~~~
eddieplan9
Samsung uses Android to sell chips: Samsung SoC, Samsung DRAM, Samsung AOLED,
etc, etc. With Dell, well, it would be packing other people's chips and
putting other people's content on it. So indeed, it's not a game Dell can
play.

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Bill_Dimm
Are you claiming that Samsung doesn't make a profit off of phones like their
Galaxy S3 aside from the profit on the Samsung chips inside? If that were
truly the case, why would they bother making phones when they could just let
others make the phones with their chips?

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rbanffy
Because if you push the envelope and make a phone that's substantially more
advanced than the competition, you drive demand for your components since the
competition needs them to make a competitive phone.

~~~
Strshps1MoreTim
The profits from Samsung mobile business are something like 20x those from
their electronic component division.

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seanmcdirmid
This. Also, Samsung's mobile biz is heavily firewalled from Samsung's
component biz, which allows them to make money selling parts to Apple while
also competing with them, and allows Apple to sue mobile without ruining their
relationship with component.

Dell suffers because the only innovation they every truly had was supply-line
streamlining, but they've been totally blown away by Apple's Cook + the move
to China, to the point that they don't have any advantages these days. They
never bothered much with R&D, and now they are dead because of that.

~~~
lostlogin
Is it really possible that Apple orders aren't seen or discussed across
divisions on or off the record? It seems very unlikely that the phone guys
have no idea what Apple is up to.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Ya, but you would have that problem with anyone you outsource to. At least
they don't trust Samsung with assembly.

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mtgx
When did Dell ever try that hard with Android? All these titles make it sound
as if they are making a huge business shifting decision. I haven't even heard
anything about Dell and Android in like 2 years. I actually thought they gave
up on it a long time ago. This sounds like a PR move to make it look as if
Windows 8 is "gaining" on Android or something. These PC-to-the-core companies
were never serious about making Android devices. They didn't understand it and
the devices it had to be on.

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marshray
I have to admit my first reaction was "Dell made Android devices?"

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justinkelly
they were selling streak mobiles with android in china - with baidu mods

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Streak>

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jpxxx
Seats on the Titanic were surprisingly affordable in the last few minutes.

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DigitalSea
I guess it makes it easy to give up on something when you never tried in the
first place. I bet most people with exception of a few that frequent Hacker
News and read tech blogs regularly never even heard of Dell's weak attempts at
making an Android phone.

They might be in a better position to make a splash with Windows Phone 8, but
I guess we will have to wait and see if that happens or not. My faith in Dell
as a company left a while ago, I think they'll forever be known as a "cheap
family computing" company and nothing more to be quite honest.

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lnanek2
I had a 5" display Dell Streak and really liked it, actually. I didn't
consider it that underpowered at all, as the article claims. It actually had a
cell modem in it, which was rarer in tablets of the day, especially minis. It
replaced my phone, and I don't like carrying a separate tablet, and I loved
reading on the big screen.

The medium density class for what was high end phone resolution, though, did
make software look bad on it often, however. Developers don't often test at
that combination.

That said, you can't compare it to modern devices. It was the same size as a
7" display device would be today. There's a certain size above which you are
out of the mainstream phone market and into the loss leading, lower numbers
tablet market. It didn't have the huge marketing budget Samsung and Apple has
either. Heck, marketing for it was even below Google Nexus levels, and I see
signs for those around SF regularly.

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TazeTSchnitzel
I think backing Windows 8 is a smart move.

Why? If Dell can make a good-quality hybrid, I'm sure people will buy it.
Windows 8 is a great OS for hybrid devices.

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conradfr
Can't there be a manufacturer that would make vanilla Android like Google with
the Nexus brand ?

We would need that especially when a LG can't get enough stock.

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untog
As much as we techies would like it, there isn't a mass market for stock
Android devices. Most people don't care.

~~~
pmr_
I thought that the recent sales of the Nexus {4,7,10} showed exactly the
opposite. There is still the possibility that the supply of those devices has
been short on purpose, but I haven't seen anything reliable to back that claim
up.

Most people want Vanilla devices and we techies want everybody else to have
Vanilla Android devices because it reduces the amount of fragmentation we have
to deal with when building things. Additionally I have literally never seen
OEM additions in mobile or desktop computing make something better for the
end-user and everybody should just get over with it.

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nealyoung
To be fair, the Nexus 4/7/10 devices are being sold at or near cost. That
model isn't really tenable for manufacturers who aren't getting support from
Google.

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Pr0
Dell's Android offerings always sucked. I would argue they should not have
even bothered. Their computer meanwhile vary, and some are actually pretty
decent.

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JulianWasTaken
I have a Dell Android device. It's the worst device I've ever owned, even with
the marvelous contributions of various amazing devs creating custom ROMs.

Good riddance.

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shmerl
Not exciting. I'll wait for my Jolla communicator.

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BrianEatWorld
The article makes it sound like they are giving up on mobile in general as all
the products mentioned are tablets, not handsets.

I'd be curious to see if they have any WP8 or Firefox OS products in the
works.

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aswanson
Dell is going the way of the do-do bird, along with hp, et al. Still hawking
desktop machines for ever shrinking margins. They are the Digital Equipment
Corporation of this decade, along with Microsoft.

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Aardwolf
The big news is: dell has made phones???

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raganwald
Like Apple, the arc of their phone business follows the arc of their music
player business.

[http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/dell-
quietly-...](http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/dell-quietly-
exits-digital-music-player-market/)

~~~
martythemaniak
I had a DJ way back when, it was a pretty solid music player. It was cheap,
durable (actually, very durable given my abuse), good baterry life, you didn't
need itunes and had the same UI as the iPod (both were lifted from Creative -
Dell got a license, Apple settled after a suit).

If you didn't want/like the iPod, that was probably the best mp3 player you
could buy.

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nemoniac
Talk about backing the wrong horse.

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rbanffy
They can't live without Microsoft. Windows machines are 99% of their business.

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rbanffy
Betting your fate on another company seems to be the perfect move for someone
who doesn't fear being on a burning platform a couple years down the road.

At least there are some laptops with Linux (or no OS installed) in their
store. I'm quite sure this kind of insubordination will not last.

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gojomo
There could be a Microsoft payment involved, or Dell might just be
strategically deciding that they'd always be a fringe provider in the Android
ecosystem.

~~~
rbanffy
Probably a licensing program that benefits those who build only Windows
devices. There are very clever ways to do it and, I'm sure, Microsoft has
clever lawyers.

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zdjohn
It makes senses that leaving "dog fight" Andriod mobile for good. Dell was
never a winner in Andriod arena, while windows phone only having less than 3%.
There is a obvious potential. Plus, there isn't any good WP8 out there at all
yet.

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clarky07
I disagree. I rather like the htc 8x and the lumia 920.

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Codhisattva
It'll take more than manufacturers to kick start Win8. If you can appeal to
developers as early adopters you can win.

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damian2000
Which is why MS has had a lot of free developer events going around the place
for both windows phone 8 and windows 8. I think you can also use the free
edition of visual studio (express) to publish to both respective stores these
days.

One thing that is confusing to me is why they didn't fully unify the phone and
tablet (Win 8) stores; right now there's two completely separate stores, each
with their own infrastructure of registration and app approval.

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matthodan
Won't be long before we see a Microsoft acquires Dell headline...

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lostlogin
Now you know what Dell should really do for their stockholders...

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programminggeek
Dell doesn't design hardware, it assembles it. Mobile phones are more about
hardware design than assembly. Thus, it doesn't play to what Dell does at all.

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seanmcdirmid
Dell doesn't assemble hardware. They outsource to some Chinese producer like
everyone else does these days. This is why they've sort of lost their
relevance.

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catch23
They've always done that, the reason they're not doing so well is mostly
because the margins for commodity hardware has gotten really thin. There was a
time when CompUSA & Dell were thrived on computer sales.

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seanmcdirmid
I don't think that's true. There was a time in the not too distant past that
many of their computers were assembled just in time in a suburb of Austin (it
was still operational circa 2001).

Edit: Dell continues to build servers in Austin, but most everything else is
outsourced.

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hiddenstage
Netflix gives up on streaming, doubles down on DVDs.

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csulok
and nothing of value was lost

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jimmthang
crazy

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lgleason
Wow, now there's a high growth market.....NOT!

