It has been rumored for more than five years that Dell is working on a smartphone. Since Dell stopped selling its MP3 player and Axim PDAs the rumors died a bit. Last year when Apple launched the iPhone many questioned whether Dell would follow suit. In a recent interview with Om Malik, Dell’s CEO Michael Dell said “we are certainly looking at the whole smartphone category, but I wouldn’t expect anything anytime soon.” When Om asked about emergence of various smartphone platforms, Dell said “the industry standard platforms upon which applications are being built and ecosystems are being created, and that kind of building-block architecture gives us all sorts of opportunities.” When Om pressed about what platform Dell would use for its smartphone, Michael said “We’re not ready to publicly disclose our plans there…we’re kind of working on that.”
Well now everyone can be sure that Dell is working on a smartphone but what platform the phone will use is still a mystery. Based on Dell’s strong relationship with Microsoft, we can guess that Dell might use upcoming Windows Mobile 7 for its smartphone.