Dell Gives up on Android, Doubles Down on Windows 8 | Hacker News Reader

Dell Gives up on Android, Doubles Down on Windows 8

maximumpc.com

52 pointsjustinbkerr58 comments

“It’s a content play with Android”. “Amazon is selling books and Google is making it up with search. So far we couldn’t find a way to build a business on Android.”

Yet, Samsung seems to be doing just fine.

Samsung uses Android to sell chips: Samsung SoC, Samsung DRAM, Samsung AOLED, etc, etc. With Dell, well, it would be packing other people's chips and putting other people's content on it. So indeed, it's not a game Dell can play.

Are you claiming that Samsung doesn't make a profit off of phones like their Galaxy S3 aside from the profit on the Samsung chips inside? If that were truly the case, why would they bother making phones when they could just let others make the phones with their chips?

Because if you push the envelope and make a phone that's substantially more advanced than the competition, you drive demand for your components since the competition needs them to make a competitive phone.

The profits from Samsung mobile business are something like 20x those from their electronic component division.

This. Also, Samsung's mobile biz is heavily firewalled from Samsung's component biz, which allows them to make money selling parts to Apple while also competing with them, and allows Apple to sue mobile without ruining their relationship with component.

Dell suffers because the only innovation they every truly had was supply-line streamlining, but they've been totally blown away by Apple's Cook + the move to China, to the point that they don't have any advantages these days. They never bothered much with R&D, and now they are dead because of that.

Is it really possible that Apple orders aren't seen or discussed across divisions on or off the record? It seems very unlikely that the phone guys have no idea what Apple is up to.

Ya, but you would have that problem with anyone you outsource to. At least they don't trust Samsung with assembly.

I don't follow your logic. If it is the components that are the key to making a superior phone, there would be demand for those components even if Samsung didn't make a competing phone with them, unless you are assuming that all of the other phone makers would overlook the opportunity to beat out their competitors by refusing to use components that would allow them to make superior phones.

It appears to me that is basically what Apple did with the original iPhone. No one was even trying until there was a competitor that showed what could be done.

Hasn't dell built a rather large company on packing other people's chips with other people's content? Not sure what android changes. I guess they would lose margin on the windows license, but that's about it.

Yes. But historically the content producers weren't selling the device as a loss-leader.

It's hard to match google's prices on android devices when google is content to break even on the device.

Windows 8 will have to deal with that downward price pressure as well. Except perhaps for business, which I suspect will be Dell's target.

When did Dell ever try that hard with Android? All these titles make it sound as if they are making a huge business shifting decision. I haven't even heard anything about Dell and Android in like 2 years. I actually thought they gave up on it a long time ago. This sounds like a PR move to make it look as if Windows 8 is "gaining" on Android or something. These PC-to-the-core companies were never serious about making Android devices. They didn't understand it and the devices it had to be on.

I have to admit my first reaction was "Dell made Android devices?"

they were selling streak mobiles with android in china - with baidu mods

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Streak

Seats on the Titanic were surprisingly affordable in the last few minutes.

I guess it makes it easy to give up on something when you never tried in the first place. I bet most people with exception of a few that frequent Hacker News and read tech blogs regularly never even heard of Dell's weak attempts at making an Android phone.

They might be in a better position to make a splash with Windows Phone 8, but I guess we will have to wait and see if that happens or not. My faith in Dell as a company left a while ago, I think they'll forever be known as a "cheap family computing" company and nothing more to be quite honest.

I had a 5" display Dell Streak and really liked it, actually. I didn't consider it that underpowered at all, as the article claims. It actually had a cell modem in it, which was rarer in tablets of the day, especially minis. It replaced my phone, and I don't like carrying a separate tablet, and I loved reading on the big screen.

The medium density class for what was high end phone resolution, though, did make software look bad on it often, however. Developers don't often test at that combination.

That said, you can't compare it to modern devices. It was the same size as a 7" display device would be today. There's a certain size above which you are out of the mainstream phone market and into the loss leading, lower numbers tablet market. It didn't have the huge marketing budget Samsung and Apple has either. Heck, marketing for it was even below Google Nexus levels, and I see signs for those around SF regularly.

I think backing Windows 8 is a smart move.

Why? If Dell can make a good-quality hybrid, I'm sure people will buy it. Windows 8 is a great OS for hybrid devices.

Can't there be a manufacturer that would make vanilla Android like Google with the Nexus brand ?

We would need that especially when a LG can't get enough stock.

As much as we techies would like it, there isn't a mass market for stock Android devices. Most people don't care.

I thought that the recent sales of the Nexus {4,7,10} showed exactly the opposite. There is still the possibility that the supply of those devices has been short on purpose, but I haven't seen anything reliable to back that claim up.

Most people want Vanilla devices and we techies want everybody else to have Vanilla Android devices because it reduces the amount of fragmentation we have to deal with when building things. Additionally I have literally never seen OEM additions in mobile or desktop computing make something better for the end-user and everybody should just get over with it.

To be fair, the Nexus 4/7/10 devices are being sold at or near cost. That model isn't really tenable for manufacturers who aren't getting support from Google.

I doubt stock Android had anything to do with it.

The Nexus 4 is a good smart phone at iPod Touch prices. Who doesn't want that?

Most people want Vanilla device

That's exactly what I don't believe. To someone not in the know vanilla, stock, or standard all sounds sub-optimal. Android With Sense? I'm getting Sense for free. Why wouldn't I want that?

If customers don't care (and I think you're right), why ALL manufacturers spend so much money to make custom UI, especially as that prevent quicker system update (or any update at all sometimes) ?

Sure. But what would drive the sales of these devices?

They would be just another 'vanilla Android' in a sea of 'vanilla Androids'.

Design, hardware features, reliability, customer service, branding, price. You know. Like every other industry.

> Design, hardware features,

No longer vanilla.

I really have no idea what you mean by that.

Dell's Android offerings always sucked. I would argue they should not have even bothered. Their computer meanwhile vary, and some are actually pretty decent.

I have a Dell Android device. It's the worst device I've ever owned, even with the marvelous contributions of various amazing devs creating custom ROMs.

Good riddance.

Not exciting. I'll wait for my Jolla communicator.

The article makes it sound like they are giving up on mobile in general as all the products mentioned are tablets, not handsets.

I'd be curious to see if they have any WP8 or Firefox OS products in the works.

Dell is going the way of the do-do bird, along with hp, et al. Still hawking desktop machines for ever shrinking margins. They are the Digital Equipment Corporation of this decade, along with Microsoft.

The big news is: dell has made phones???

Like Apple, the arc of their phone business follows the arc of their music player business.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/dell-quietly-...

I had a DJ way back when, it was a pretty solid music player. It was cheap, durable (actually, very durable given my abuse), good baterry life, you didn't need itunes and had the same UI as the iPod (both were lifted from Creative - Dell got a license, Apple settled after a suit).

If you didn't want/like the iPod, that was probably the best mp3 player you could buy.

Talk about backing the wrong horse.

They can't live without Microsoft. Windows machines are 99% of their business.

Betting your fate on another company seems to be the perfect move for someone who doesn't fear being on a burning platform a couple years down the road.

At least there are some laptops with Linux (or no OS installed) in their store. I'm quite sure this kind of insubordination will not last.

There could be a Microsoft payment involved, or Dell might just be strategically deciding that they'd always be a fringe provider in the Android ecosystem.

Probably a licensing program that benefits those who build only Windows devices. There are very clever ways to do it and, I'm sure, Microsoft has clever lawyers.

It makes senses that leaving "dog fight" Andriod mobile for good. Dell was never a winner in Andriod arena, while windows phone only having less than 3%. There is a obvious potential. Plus, there isn't any good WP8 out there at all yet.

I disagree. I rather like the htc 8x and the lumia 920.

It'll take more than manufacturers to kick start Win8. If you can appeal to developers as early adopters you can win.

Which is why MS has had a lot of free developer events going around the place for both windows phone 8 and windows 8. I think you can also use the free edition of visual studio (express) to publish to both respective stores these days.

One thing that is confusing to me is why they didn't fully unify the phone and tablet (Win 8) stores; right now there's two completely separate stores, each with their own infrastructure of registration and app approval.

Won't be long before we see a Microsoft acquires Dell headline...

Now you know what Dell should really do for their stockholders...

Dell doesn't design hardware, it assembles it. Mobile phones are more about hardware design than assembly. Thus, it doesn't play to what Dell does at all.

Dell doesn't assemble hardware. They outsource to some Chinese producer like everyone else does these days. This is why they've sort of lost their relevance.

They've always done that, the reason they're not doing so well is mostly because the margins for commodity hardware has gotten really thin. There was a time when CompUSA & Dell were thrived on computer sales.

I don't think that's true. There was a time in the not too distant past that many of their computers were assembled just in time in a suburb of Austin (it was still operational circa 2001).

Edit: Dell continues to build servers in Austin, but most everything else is outsourced.

Netflix gives up on streaming, doubles down on DVDs.

and nothing of value was lost

crazy

Wow, now there's a high growth market.....NOT!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com