While Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco thinks Dell's move into smartphones is a good idea or, at least, the way it's going about it. I can't agree. Has he forgotten Dell's MP3 player?
The rest of the world certainly has.
In the smartphone market, as Capobianco notes, Dell is planning to do an open-source Google Android-based phone and a Windows Mobile-based phone, which he thinks makes sense:
I think it is a smart move. They do not take risk, they do not expose themselves too much, they will pick the winner later. The only risk of not making a move is not making a move. If the market moves too fast (it always does) they risk to be defocused and have to jump on one bandwagon quickly, dropping the other one. Motorola has done exactly that. But they are desperate. Dell is not.
It's true that Dell's open/closed approach is a less risky way than to pick one platform and go to market with only one, but the alternative is for Dell to realize that its track record in markets outside industrial enterprise markets is terrible and to stay out completely. Dell's MP3 player was worse than uncool. It was Soviet.
Now it wants to compete with the iPhone and Blackberry? Not a chance. Dell lacks the DNA. The company has always been a low-cost aggregator of others' technologies. It ha never demonstrated a penchant for design or technology innovation, both of which are key attributes of both Research in Motion and Apple. In this club, Dell can't compete.
Like Microsoft, Dell needs to look in the mirror and learn how to work with what's there, rather than veering off into foreign markets in which it has no savvy and no experience. Few are going to relish hearing, "Dude, you're getting a Dell smartphone!"
I'm rereading Businessweek's excellent article, "The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit," and it became very clear why Apple is succeeding in the enterprise despite not focusing on the enterprise.
Apple has made computing pleasant.
I love my Mac. I love its look and feel. I love the software. I actually look forward to using my Mac. It's not a Dell, dude. It has class.
Another (overused) way of saying this is that Apple has "consumerized" the computing experience. As it turns out, enterprises employ consumers. Lots of them.
But it's not just Apple.
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Which company did you think of when you read that title? My guess is that you didn't think of Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, or...Red Hat, though Red Hat claims this mission as its own. Why? Red Hat has taken as its mission the mantle of leadership into software's future, but it is not the company we most associate with the future. Who gets that honor?
Apple and/or Google.
I spent some time this morning discussing this with a friend who who runs IT for part of Google's European operations out of its London office. He has a hugely interesting background, having spent a few years at Red Hat before joining Google in 2007. He left Red Hat on great terms and continues to be an admirer of his former employer.
Yet it is his former employer. Why? And why have Greg Stein, Guido Von Rossum, and other prominent open-source developers and advocates joined up with Google?
It's not about the money. Most have made plenty of money elsewhere.
Instead, I believe it has everything to do with the customer which, not coincidentally, is almost certainly the reason that Google (and Apple) get credit for defining the 21st-century software experience, rather than Red Hat (or any other enterprise software company).
Let me explain.
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