David Flynn16 November 2009, 9:30 AM
Making its debut in China and Brazil, the Mini 3 is the first of several expected Dell smartphones based on Google’s Android platform.
After months if not years of speculation, Dell has entered the smartphone market – and it’s putting its money on Android rather than Windows Mobile. At least for the time being.
First out of the gate is the compact Mini 3, a handset with a 3.5 inch HD touchscreen running Android (although it’s not clear if this is Android 1.5 or the fresh-baked 2.0 edition – presumably the later, as the Mini 3 isn’t due to land until the end of this month).
The first two countries to get the Mini 3 will be Brazil and China, courtesy of their respective carriers Claro and China Mobile.
China Mobile has already taken to Android’s open source base and modified the code to create a customised OS which it calls OPhone.
The choice of Brazil and China is intriguing because both countries are part of the BRIC market – Brazil, Russia, India and China – which is considered to have the world’s largest growth potential for personal technology. Dell is one of several PC companies which has been focussing on ways to tap into this vast and highly profitable market.
However, Dell could also parlay its existing telco relationships – created through direct carrier sales of its 3G netbooks, as was done in Australia, the UK Europe with Vodafone – to roll out the Mini 3 or its siblings into other markets.
Dell is tipped to announce additional smartphones at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show 2010, to be held from January 7-10 in Las Vegas. However, Android might not be hogging the spotlight for too long.
A Dell spokesman hedged the company’s smartphone OS bets, saying only that “the initial Mini 3 smartphones are designed around the Android platform”. The company could conceivably roll Windows Mobile 6.5 into one of its Mini smartphones or wait until next year’s release of the higher-end Windows Mobile 7, codenamed Photon.