Michael Dell Talks Smartphones, Cheap Notebooks and Server Dominance in the Data Center

by Chris Preimesberger

Dell on his company getting into the smartphone business: “The Internet in your pocket … and new platforms that are coming out are pretty interesting. Some of them resemble things that we’re pretty familiar with, in terms of open systems and the ability to compete in an open ecosystem. I think you’ll begin to see us show up there, gradually.”(Photo courtesy of Dell)

Dell on the future of the data center: “A lot of what goes on in the data center is being gobbled up by servers. We see switching, for example, rapidly collapsing into the servers. You’ve got virtualized switches, but even the switches that aren’t virtualized—they’re now sitting inside blade chassis.”(Photo by Chris Preimesberger)

More from Dell about the data center: “Not that long ago, it looked like intelligence was getting sucked out of the server and it was going somehow into the network, but actually now it looks like it’s going the other way. The server is becoming the epicenter of the data center, and you’re seeing the switches get embedded inside the server. I’m sure there are plenty of other opinions out there.”(Photo courtesy of Dell)

Dell on the Latitude 2100 laptop: “It looks like a netbook or notebook, but it’s actually a system. It comes on a cart, with a whole bunch of these things. They come in different colors, you roll the cart in, you take them out, give them to the students. You pump them back in, they charge up, they have the networking all built in. Our sales of this 2100 system have been many times what we thought, because the schools just love it because it fits their application really perfectly.”(Photo courtesy of Dell)

French journalist Jean-Baptiste Su (left) meets with Dell following the event. Dell confirmed to Su that his company will market an Android-powered smartphone in 2010.(Photo by Chris Preimesberger)