Click to View

Dell, the company that brought value to the handheld market, may be considering another run at the mobile-device game with the release of a new converged smartphone/multimedia product sometime next year, according to a recent report in Forbes.

Should the rumor be true, then it would be an about face or the company, which abandoned the handheld market, creating a huge hole in its producing lineup, earlier this year. That's when Dell discontinued its once popular line of Axim Pocket PCs. It no longer offers a digital audio/MP3 player as well.

Today, when you go to Dell's Web site, you find a number of different PDAs and smartphones—from the likes of Pharos, ASUS, Socket Mobile, and Nokia, however; not one of which features Dell’s own branding, of course.

Supposedly, Dell is developing its upcoming smartphone entry with Taiwan’s Quanta, under the watchful eye of former Motorola executive VP of cell phones Ron Garriques, now the President of Dell's Global Consumer Group. Garriques joined Dell back in February.

While Dell's device would include video, an MP3 player, and Internet access, it's not clear if it'll offer cellular-wireless or Wi-Fi only (a la Nokia's Internet tablets) voice and data access, or include both of these wireless technologies as most smartphones do today.

Rumors about the possibility of Dell developing a smartphone go back years, at least until 2003. With no mobile device line at all and smartphones being as popular as they are now, the need for Dell to offer something in that product category takes on more urgency today than it did then, though.

While there's been no official comment from Dell on the subject, the Forbes report is the second to refer to the possibility of a Dell smartphone this year. Back in April, DigiTimes of Taiwan, the source of the 2003 rumor, reported Dell reached an agreement with Quanta, the same company it is said to be dealing with in the recent story, to develop a smartphone based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform.