Dell's purported music player will apparently not be here in time for the holidays.
A report in Monday's Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources saying that a music player with software designed by Zing, a company Dell bought last year, will not be released as planned before the crucial holiday shopping period.
The report got around and Dell publicly addressed it later Monday on the company blog.
"As we said a few months ago, our strategy focuses on content offerings and delivery platforms that mix Zing software, remote access and pre-configured media bundles across all of our devices, including licensing agreements with entertainment distributors. It has never been about a music player," the blog posting reads.
Dell has indeed been raising its profile in the music industry. Though it's been largely silent on its specific plans for Zing's software, the company has began striking deals with music labels and film studios as part of its developing entertainment strategy.
It wasn't much more than an offhand comment this time, but Michael Dell's got the gadget-obsessed stirred up again.
In an interview with Om Malik of GigaOm, Dell was asked about the company's plans in the smartphone industry. At first he gave a vague, corporate PR-type answer: "We are certainly looking at the whole smartphone category, but I wouldn't expect anything anytime soon." But when Malik pressed him about whether his company was more interested in a Symbian or Android OS for any potential handheld device, Dell was slightly more informative.
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Dell)
"We're not ready to publicly disclose our plans there...we're kind of working on that," he said.
Well, it's about time. Dell's been out of the handheld business for over a year, but there have been signs it's been testing the waters, such as when it picked up Zing in August. One round of rumors put the device as Android-based and more recently as Windows Mobile.
Dell did warn not to expect any product anytime soon, so perhaps they're waiting for Windows Mobile 7? Stay tuned.
If you haven't heard of Zingspot.com yet, you soon might.
It was recently registered by none other than Dell, which also applied for a trademark on the name. (Thanks to the Trademork blog for pointing to it.)
Zingspot is likely related to Zing Systems, a company that Dell acquired in August. Zingspot.com is described in the document filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as "an online consumer portal for digital entertainment content acquisition and distribution." Being a hardware maker, it would make more sense to expect Dell to make a device rather than a service. Especially since the PC maker officially pulled out of the portable media player market in August 2006, at the time citing a need to focus more on PCs, TVs, and printers for consumers.
Dell had little to say when it acquired the tiny, Mountain View, Calif., company that makes streaming audio software. But almost four months later and with CES fast approaching, it's interesting to look at what Dell might be doing.
The company has had a tough year, but it seems to be turning things around. (We'll know better tomorrow when Dell is due to report third-quarter earnings.) In an effort to show that it's hip and relevant, the Texas PC maker has definitely been ratcheting up the emphasis on design--see the XPS M1330 and M1530 notebooks, and XPS One desktop--and on online communities with its IdeaStorm and Direct2Dell blogs.
An online portal for entertainment seems to fit in there somewhere. But does it make sense to build another iTunes Store or Rhapsody, or a Zune store for that matter? Negotiating all those content relationships is a headache very few people want. And after all, Dell is a hardware company before anything else. Dell, by the way, declined to comment on any of its future plans for Zing or Zingspot.com.
But Zing makes a pretty nifty technology, one that SanDisk licensed for use in its Sansa Connect. It's software for real-time audio streaming--meaning you can get music wirelessly from an online source and from other portable devices. SanDisk, however, uses Yahoo's music service as its content source. So, either Dell will create its own portal or will partner with an already established online store if it does end up making a device that utilizes this software.
It's also worth noting that Zing is a pretty snappy-sounding brand name, and could lend that fresh, relevant tone to whatever they're cooking up down in Round Rock. Will we see a Zing brand on a forthcoming media player from Dell, or on a whole new family of devices? Stay tuned.
Dell said it would be doing some interesting things this year, and lo, it has: the company announced Monday it will purchase Zing Systems, maker of streaming audio technology.
Zing currently licenses its technology to SanDisk, for the Sansa Connect, and Sirius, for its Stiletto 100 product. Privately held Zing Systems is based in Mountain View, Calif., and all 120 of its employees are expected to be retained by Dell, said David Frink, a spokesman for Dell. Other details of the transaction were not released.
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Zing Systems)
After almost 20 years of very few acquisitions, Dell's latest streak of buying three companies in a matter of weeks--SilverBack Technologies, ASAP Software, and now this--probably qualifies as a shopping spree. But Dell says it's all part of the plan laid out earlier when it announced it would be expanding its retail offerings.
"We're looking at companies that can expand our capability to provide great product experiences," said Frink. "We think this is a company that can provide a great technology and entertainment experience."
Though it axed its own Dell-branded MP3 player earlier this year, Dell currently sells several different brands of portable media devices, including the Sansa Connect, as well as devices from Creative Technology, Samsung Electronics, Sony, Microsoft and Archos.
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