The Financial Times reports this week that computer-maker Dell remains committed to entering the smartphone market despite investor concerns about profitability at the firm. Ronald Garriques, president of Dell’s consumer division, told shareholders and analysts at the company’s annual financial presentation this week that Dell would work with “the top three to four” mobile operators “and see what their needs are.” He added that it would develop smartphones products for the Asian, European and the US markets. However, analysts were lukewarm on the strategy. “Dell needs a breakthrough product in order to make in-roads into the crowded handset market,” Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Collins Stewart, wrote in a research note. “The early verdict appears to be that a Dell handset is a ‘me-too’ product with a cost structure that offers little advantage over established players.” Investors are believed to be concerned about Dell’s push into consumer electronics following its warning that margins would contract in the current quarter. 

Rumours of a Dell smartphone have been circulating since the beginning of the year; at one stage the firm was expected to unveil its first devices at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in February. More recently, Dell has been linked with China Mobile over a deal that will see the world’s largest mobile operator by subscribers launch one or two Dell smartphones by year-end. Dell is reportedly one of a number of vendors developing handsets that will support China Mobile’s new Open Mobile System (OMS), a platform based on Google’s Android compatible with TD-SCDMA, China Mobile’s 3G standard. Dell joins a host of rival PC-makers that are understood to be planning a move into smartphones, including Asustek, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. Another rival, Acer, launched its first smartphones in February.