Dell's Mini 3 Smartphone Catches Android Buzz At The Right Time
If Dell wasn't exactly adept at keeping Mini 3 a secret -- leaked photos have circulated for some weeks now -- it deserves credit for reading the tea leaves on Android and exploiting Google's mobile OS at a critical time in its history.
Google boss Eric Schmidt recently used Google's earnings call to predict that "Android adoption is about to explode." Mini 3 therefore gives Dell a stake in a hot market for new phones based on Android -- a select group that includes Motorola's Droid, HTC's Hero, and some of this fall's most buzzed-about models.
Dell didn't confirm any technical details of the Mini 3, but said Friday that the Mini 3 will be initially available in China and Brazil only. Although Dell does have telco relationships in the U.S., with AT&T and Verizon, and in Europe and other parts of Asia, with Vodafone, M1 and Maxis, it did not confirm Mini 3 or other smartphone plans for those markets.
In China, Dell will partner with China Mobile -- the world's largest telco and archrival to China Telecom, which recently launched the iPhone there. In Brazil, it will partner with America Movil's Claro network. China availability begins in November and Brazil will see its Mini 3s by the end of the year. Dell said in a statement that "details of phone models will be announced on a partner-by-partner basis when devices are available in stores."
If Dell is entering a hugely competitive -- and immensely crowded -- market, it's also picking some of the hottest growth areas to kickstart its smartphone campaign.
Various analytics put China's smartphone market as having grown, by number of shipments, as much as 30 percent year-over-year and researcher In-Stat estimates that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of China's smartphone market will be about 25 percent through 2013. In Brazil, America Movil's Claro has 25 percent of the smartphone market and grew subscribers by 19 percent in its third quarter.
Dell is also releasing an Android-based phone in the midst of a major growth spike for the free, open source mobile OS. According to Gartner Research, Android is seen on only about 1.8 percent of smartphones around the world, but Android's growth has been steadily gaining while some competitors' shares -- especially Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS -- have been plummeting.
Motorola, whose just-released Droid is the first U.S. smartphone to run Android 2.0, has already thrown in its smartphone lot entirely with Google Android, and other major smartphone players, including HTC and Samsung, have several new Android phones.