US manufacturer Dell has already made a somewhat tentative foray into the tablet world with its Streak 5 and Streak 7, both of which have now been discontinued.
In a recent interview, Dell has implied that those efforts didn’t really count, and that a proper consumer tablet will follow later in the year. When it’s good and ready.
Without mentioning any names (HP TouchPad, BlackBerry PlayBook…), Dell notes that many tablets have been hyped to buggery before ultimately falling flat on their stupid I’m-better-than-the-iPad faces.
"We have been taking our time. The general failure of everyone that's tried to introduce a tablet outside of Apple suggested Dell made a prudent choice,” said Steve Felice, Dell’s chief commercial officer.
We reckon Amazon might have something to say about that. The Amazon Kindle Fire was shifting more than a million units per week in December. But I digress.
Felice continues: "You will see [Dell] enter this market in a bigger way toward the end of the year. So we are not really deemphasising it, we are really being very careful how we enter it.”
As for the operating system on Dell’s unnamed consumer tablet, Felice was suitably vague, saying only: "We like Windows 8 but we continue to develop with Android as well. We are still going to be more choice-driven, based on the feedback we get from customers."
And like so many manufacturers before them, Dell reckons it’s spotted a chink in the iPad’s armour. Check it: "When we introduce the products, they will be consumer products, but we are going to make sure that they are very compatible with the business marketplace, which we don't think Apple has addressed."
Good luck to you, Dell.