Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM ) is hunting for a buyer and no ones taking
the bait. Meg Whitman is trying to wrangle Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ ) into a
stronger defensive position and further its recovery from the catastrophic
failure of its mobile division following the $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm.
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ), meanwhile, is likely going to report more than $40
billion in revenue for the holiday quarter on Tuesday, thanks to sales of
portables like the iPad and iPhone. The old powerhouses of computing have been
displaced by what used to be the weakest competitor in the market just 10 years
ago, and their failure to compete in the tablet and smartphone race has left
them in dire circumstances. The question then: What is Dell (NASDAQ: DELL )
plotting? In the same way that HP and RIM have found their businesses
permanently altered by changing consumer tastes and Apples juggernaut products,
Dell has seen its role in the market transformed. Even as HP remained the
leading worldwide PC vendor during the fourth quarter of 2011, research firm
Gartner found that Lenovo (PINK: LNVGY ) pulled ahead of Dell to take the No. 2
spot. (Dell remains the No. 2 PC vendor in the U.S. ) Following the companys
narrative throughout 2011, though, the decline was expected. Unlike HP and RIM,
Dell wasnt chasing consumers across 2011, just business clients . The company
was in fact prepared for slow growth of just 1% to 5% last year while it
continued to shift its focus. In November, CEO Michael Dell declared that his
company raised R&D spending to further build its position as a solutions
provider in business Internet technology. Dell's enterprise evangelizing may
have included a bit of misdirection, though, because the Dell of 2012 seems to
be positioning itself for a run at the consumer market its peers failed to
penetrate. At the International Consumer Electronics Show last week, Dell CCO
Steve Felice confirmed that the company would release its own consumer tablet by
the end of the year. Details were scarce. Felice said the company hadnt decided
whether its device would use Microsoft s (NASDAQ: MSFT ) new Windows 8 operating
system or a future version of Google s (NASDAQ: GOOG ) Android. What Felice did
say was that Dell had learned important lessons from both its own failures with
the Streak (a tablet aimed solely at business clients) and those of its
competitors like RIM and HP. Felices lip service is encouraging. His CES talk
emphasized that tablets need a strong, marketable ecosystem of apps, services,
and clean functionality to succeed, not just strong technical specifications.
The tablet seemed to only be the beginning of Dells new consumer-oriented plans.
The company also debuted its first Ultrabook laptop at CES, the XPS 13, an
incredibly beefy laptop built for both consumers and business clients. It is
priced at $999, directly on par with Apples MacBook Air. Its impossible to say
at this point whether or not Dell stands a chance in the tablet market. Its
certainly in a better position to succeed than HP or RIM were, if for no other
reason than because Dell's ability to release a more affordable device is
backed by more developed platforms, whether from Microsoft or Google. Amazon
(NASDAQ: AMZN ) has proven that companies other than Apple can sell a tablet,
but Amazon has a media retail empire to back up its device, whereas Dell only
has a faded brand name. What the companys nascent tablet plans and its new
Ultrabook prove, though, is that despite diminished growth and statements to the
contrary, Dell hasnt given up on the consumer market just yet. Its possible that
the companys patience will pay off while the market reorients itself in the
post-smartphone, post-tablet era. That possibility is far from a guaranteed,
though. As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any
of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at
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