Allow us to refresh your memory. Joining Sony and Kickstarter-backed Pebble are Google, Samsung, and Apple. Oh, and Qualcomm. Intel, too. By the way, LG and Foxconn said they also want a piece of the future action. And now – Dell! Excitement aside (okay, not quite!), it looks like by the end of the year, we may be one step closer to science-fiction.
So, Dell. If you have been following the news, you'll know by now that Dell has been in an unenviable position, as the giant manufacturer's woes continue – worldwide PC sales are on the low and Dell has been losing market share in the industry to rivals like Chinese Lenovo.
Back to smartwatches, though - Sam Burd, Dell's global VP, told The Guardian that Dell is “exploring ideas in that space”, even though “there are challenges in cost, and how to make it a really good experience […] But the piece that's interesting is that computers are getting smaller. Having a [smart] watch on your wrist – that's pretty interesting, pretty appealing.”
Dell's top management seems set on transforming the company and preparing for what may easily be the next frontier of portable computing. We are not surprised, as Dell's dip into the smartphone and tablet market have been met with little success at best and a total failure at worst. Burd confirms the notion for a need to refocus away from the company's traditional market, by noting that going private may be what the company needs:
"Michael Dell believes we are on the right page for transformation. The view is that we can get ourselves out of the quarterly reporting process where you can't make hard decisions to speed up that transformation."
"Looking ahead five years, we expect devices and form factors to continue to change. There will still be a need for 'static' computing on desktops, but there will be a real need for mobile devices. There's a lot of discussion about how that fits into wearable devices like we've seen with Google Glass and watches. We're looking at a world of lots of connected devices."
source: The Guardian
