Dell has put its smartphone ambitions into reverse, announcing that it will not make new Android products and that its tablets will all run on Windows 8 from here on.
Speaking at Dell World in Austin, Texas, and as reported by Forbes, Dell’s vice chairman and president, Jeff Clarke, confirmed that there will be no new Dell Android devices. He said that the company could not figure out a way to build a business around Google’s OS, and cited companies like Amazon who undercut hardware vendors in retail pricing in order to sell digital content.
China had been the final foothold for Dell’s smartphone play, but this announcement has put an end to this as well.
The absence of Dell in Australian phone stores is unlikely to be felt by Aussie smartphone and tablet shoppers. Of the dozen or so Dell handsets developed by the computer hardware company, only the Streak tablet ever really made it onto a telco’s range; it launched with Optus well after its initial global introduction.