James Delahunty
13 Apr 2009 18:07
According to an analyst, Dell is currently in discussions with China Mobile over the possibility of the company offering a smartphone based on China Mobile's operating system. The move would put Dell right in the middle of a very competitive and huge market in China. Dell has already hinted in the past that it will offer a smartphone or mobile Internet device, but didn't any more details than that.
Zhang Jun, an analyst at research firm Wedge MKI, said Dell is currently waiting for China Mobile to pick one or two models from smartphones it has offered, and that both phones may have a deal around August this year. If so, a Dell smartphone could hit the Chinese market by the end of the year.
The China Mobile operating system is based on Google's Android, but includes China Mobile's own applications. The Open Mobile System (OMS) operating system supports the network's Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) network standard, which has so far had a slow take-up in the region due to the dull smartphone offerings.