High Speed Internet Access (HSIA): Mobile Internet

The rumours circulating for a while are that Dell are venturing into the mobile Internet Device (MID) market with a device a bit bigger than the iPod Touch which connects to the Internet and also plays music and videos. It has no mobile phone capabilities. The rumours are unconfirmed but come from people briefed on Dell’s plans according to the Wall Street Journal. The CEO of Dell, Michael Dell hinted at this a few months ago in a speech in Tokyo. “We already have agreements with many mobile carriers around netbook devices, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that we would have smaller mobile Internet devices or smartphones in the future.” he said.

Dell’s mobile device will run on the Android operating system and use an ARM chip rather than Intel.

It will be interesting to see how it is received if it ever sees the light of day especially given that it has no phone capabilities and yet is not big enough to be practical enough to use for working away from the office other than dealing with emails. Given that most people need a phone, it seems unlikely that they would be prepared to carry around two devices when smartphones such as the iPhone are so popular. Also Netbooks have surged in popularity in the small computer niche especially as the keyboard designs have evolved to make them much easier to use. Not everyone wants a touchscreen with limited keyboard functionality especially when trying to accomplish some work tasks.

I guess we’ll see how the overlapping markets of netbooks, smartphones, mobile Internet Devices and ultra-portable notebooks evolve.

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