For Dell, it"s "try and try again" when it comes to making a tablet that will actually sell to the masses. The PC maker tried and failed to do so with its seven inch Android powered Dell Streak tablet. Now Reuters reports that Dell is going back to the drawing board as it plans to launch a new consumer tablet product before the end of 2012.
According to an interview conducted at CES 2012, Dell"s chief commercial officer Steve Felice said:
You will see us enter this market in a bigger way toward the end of the year. So we are not really deemphasizing it, we are really being very careful how we enter it. When you are talking about PC, people are more focused on the hardware itself. When you are talking about the tablet or the smartphone, people are interested in the overall environment it"s operating in. As we have matured in this, we are spending a lot more time in the overall ecosystem.
The big question: Which operating system will the new Dell tablet use? Felice said, "We like Windows 8 but we continue to develop with Android as well. We are still going to be more choice-driven, based on the feedback we get from customers." He did say that he liked Microsoft"s next operating system, saying, "There hasn"t been a lot of advancement and it"s given Microsoft a good window to come into the market with Windows 8. I like the touch Windows 8 feature."