JohnThode
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Dell Streak 10 Pro tablet to launch in China this summer, US may get it next year
John Thode, Dell's Vice President for mobile devices, has shared a Honeycomb-flavored snippet of his company's tablet roadmap with CNET. The 10-inch Android tablet that we saw at CES and suspected could be with us this month will indeed be making its debut in the summer, according to Thode, but its launch market will be China, not the US. He points to a number of "inhibitors and barriers to success" in Dell's homeland -- such as mobile carriers dictating pricing models that stifle the adoption of tablets and users being unaware of "what exactly Android is bringing" -- as the causes for Round Rock's atypical decision. The Streak 10 Pro, as it'll officially be known, comes with a Honeycomb-standard 1280 x 800 resolution screen, an edge-to-edge glass surface, two cameras (one of them reaching a 5 megapixel res), an SD card slot, a thickness of 12mm, and 1080p video playback capabilities courtesy of an unspecified NVIDIA Tegra dual-core processor. An additional dock will allow the 10 Pro to act as a USB host, while augmenting its connectivity with HDMI, Ethernet, and, obviously, a set of USB ports. The US may still get to enjoy this bounty of options, but we're told it won't happen until 2012. By which point we'll probably have a taste for fresher, icier versions of Android. Update: Dell has confirmed all of the foregoing in a blog post.
CE-Oh no he didn't! Part LXVIII: Only Apple and dope smokers claim to know the future of tablets, says Dell VP
What we'd normally brush off as pretty standard mainstream tech piece became comedy gold thanks to the acerbic wit of Dell's John Thode. The VP of mobile devices was discussing its companies entry into the tablet industry (all the while promoting the Mini 5, of course) and seemed to downplay Apple's iPad momentum. "It's really hard to kind of do the same thing over again twice or three times... [Apple] is going to have more competition here." A rational statement, but here's where it gets interesting: "If anybody tells you they know exactly what's going to happen here, they're either Apple, or they're smoking dope." Don't tell John, but we hear Gartner just hired the entire cast and crew of Dazed and Confused for a special analytics department.
WSJ: Dell "preparing a move into cellphones as early as next month"
You know who's blabbing again? That reclusive set of business people who always seem to be "familiar with the matter," that's who. This time, they've got the Wall Street Journal in a twist over renewed rumors that Dell is "preparing a move into cellphones as early as next month." Next month, is of course the big cellphone coming out party known as Mobile World Congress in Barcelona -- an event Dell has flat-out denied any intention to attend. Still, the evidence presented by the WSJ is pretty overwhelming. First, sources say that a variety of smartphone prototypes, including one with a QWERTY-less touchscreen and another with a sliding keyboard, have already been built running Android and Windows Mobile. Second, Dell's smartphone team "spent much of last year" meeting with suppliers, carriers, and Asian phone manufacturers. Dell's team includes the former head of Motorola's phone division (Ron Garriques) and another Moto employee (John Thode) who heads up Dell's netbook group. The latter being of interest since the iPhone and BlackBerry Storm are considered netbooks by their makers. Oh, and Dell still hasn't made good on its purchase of Zing and its plans to build an all encompassing media ecosystem to manage your audio and video files across PCs and mobile devices. Sources do contend that plans have not been finalized and Dell may still abandon the effort. But with Acer making the jump into Smartphones next month and other non-traditional players having great success in the space at the expense of the former cellphone powerhouses, one thing is clear: PC guys "will just walk in" and figure this out. Right Ed?
