Dell's Streak mobile device will begin shipping at the end of this week, a major smartphone-tablet gamble from Dell and the latest in an increasingly longer line of Android-powered mobiles. Streak will be available for $299.999 with a two-year contract from AT&T, for for $549.99 unlocked, and Dell is hoping for a similar buzz that greeted the device when it launched in the United Kingdom earlier this year.
But Dell is fighting an uphill battle to gain traction with the Streak. Here's why:
1. Identity: Is it a tablet or a smartphone? Dell might think it's pointing to a new category of mobile devices that further blurs the already-blurry lines between those two mobile devices, but as any salesperson knows, when the customer is confused, the customer says no.
2. Pricing: Price-wise, the Streak does come under Apple's iPad and many tablets out there, but it's a solid C-note more than most smartphones with which it will also compete. Given that it shares so many characteristics -- 1 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G enablement, 5-megapixel camera -- with many of the hot Android phones already out there, it's hard to determine what the extra $100 is getting you.
3. Android 1.6: Dell didn't indicate exactly which version of Android Streak will ship with in its press release -- probably because it didn't want to play up the fact that when users get their Streaks, they'll be running a version of Android several versions behind the current one. Dell Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca indicated in a Tuesday blog post that it'll indeed be 1.6, but Dell will offer an over-the-air upgrade to Android 2.2, aka Froyo, later this year. It's a minor quibble, provided the 2.2 upgrade arrives quickly enough, but a quibble nonetheless.
4. Android's Advance: The explosion of hot devices running Google's Android OS -- including some of the coolest smartphones of 2010 -- is something Dell clearly wants a piece of, and Android ubiquity will help it. It may also hurt it, though; with so may choices for Android devices -- including a burgeoning Android market for tabelts -- what's separating Dell's from the pack?
5. AT&T: If Dell's paying attention to the mobile device competition, it knows that the two things users hate most about their Apple iPhones, at least according to a recent survey by ChangeWave, is that they have to use AT&T's network and the quality of AT&T's 3G service. There's no question AT&T is a turn-off for many smartphone users -- something that Dell might have to find out the hard way.
