Dell will begin pre-sales of its Streak tablet PC Aug. 12. The Streak's Google Android OS and 5-inch touch screen are just two features that Dell hopes will help distinguish the device in the burgeoning tablet PC market.
Dell will begin pre-sales of its Streak tablet PC on Aug. 12, the day before
general availability. As the tablet PC market begins to heat up, in the wake of
the Apple iPad's enormous success, Dell is likely hoping that the Streak's
ability to Web-surf, display multimedia and make voice calls will distinguish
it from both current and future competitors.
According to Dell, the Streak will retail for $299.99 with a two-year
AT&T contract, and $549.99 unlocked. The device features a 5-inch touch screen,
a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, built-in WiFi capability and 3G connectivity,
user-accessibly microSD expandable memory of up to 32GB and a 5-megapixel
camera with dual LED flash. Turn-by-turn navigation and street views come
courtesy of Google Maps.
The Streak will run a customized version of Google Android, with access to
Android Marketplace and Dell-specific "interface enhancements,"
according to an Aug. 10 statement released by the company. The manufacturer is
positioning the Streak as a mobile entertainment, navigation and
social-connectivity device.
Click
here for more information about the Dell Streak.
During
a June interview with reporters, following his company's annual meeting
with financial analysts, CEO Michael
Dell suggested that the Streak's initial release in the United
Kingdom had met with a largely positive
response. However, he added, Dell's plans for the mobile space will focus not
only on the devices, but also the back-end infrastructure needed to support the
massive amounts of content piped to users on the move.
"There has to be servers and storage to
support all the data that is being pulled by users," Dell said, "and
this is an exciting opportunity for us."
The general consensus among tech analysts and pundits is that the tablet PC
market will only increase in coming years. The vanguard product among consumer
tablets, the Apple iPad, sold 3.27 million units in the third fiscal quarter of
2010, helping fuel Apple's total revenues of $15.7 billion and rivals' urge to
deliver a suitable competitor to the market in short order. It is widely
expected that Hewlett-Packard will issue a consumer tablet running its newly
acquired Palm WebOS within the next few quarters; other manufacturers are
reportedly considering either Windows 7 or Google Android for their own
flat-screen offerings.
Tablets also have the potential to cannibalize the traditional laptop
market. "If it turns out that the iPad cannibalizes PCs, that, I think, is
fantastic for us because there is a lot of PCs to cannibalize,"
Apple
COO Tim Cook suggested during a July 20 earnings call. "It's still a
big market."
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has also made
it clear his company plans to enter the tablet market in a big way.
"We have a lot of IP, we have a lot of good software in this area, we've
done a lot of work on ink and touch and everything else-we have got to make
things happen," he said during Microsoft's financial analyst meeting July
29. "Just like we had to make things happen on netbooks, we've got to make
things happen with Windows 7 on slates."
In other words, Dell is entering a market that looks to become a lot more
crowded.
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