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ZDNet is currently running an interview with Michael Dell in which he had some interesting things to say about mobile computing.

First of all, he is not buying all the recent commentary that Netbooks are saving the PC industry and will be outselling Notebook computers in a few years. Even though Dell has released a Netbook that is generating a lot of buzz, he seemed pretty dismissive of the whole thing. When the interviewer referred to Netbooks as a phenomenon, Mr. Dell had this to say:

I’m not that fond of the phraseology. If you look at screen sizes for portable computers, 85 percent of portable computers that run advanced operating systems are in the 14- to 15-inch screen space. What percentage will be 8.9- to 10-inch [screens] is hard to say.

We have introduced a product there, but I don’t think [netbooks] will be the massive growth factor in the industry. I think it’s a second machine in developed countries and a first machine in newly developed countries.

I agree with him that for most users Netbooks will be second or third computers, but I feel that if the prices drop a little lower, and the processors get a little faster, Netbooks will sell in massive numbers, and will become a common fixture in the enterprise and the consumer market.

In light of the recent debut of Android, of course the questions came around to the long standing rumor that Dell was preparing to produce a smartphone of it’s own. Mr. Dell dodged that line of inquiry as follows:

I think you will see smaller and smaller screen devices from Dell.

Smaller and smaller screens? Perhaps not a phone at all…an Axim MID or UMPC perhaps? We live in hope, Mr. Dell, we live in hope…

Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).