Dell doesn't want to be No. 1 in smartphones

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: If you're one of the last major technology companies to get into the crowded smartphone market, how do you stake out your territory and compete against the iPhone and the BlackBerry?

That's the daunting question facing Dell Inc this summer as it launches its first U.S. smartphone with AT&T Inc -- three years after Apple Inc's iPhone and a good decade after Research in Motion's BlackBerry.

Dell's consumer business chief, Stephen Felice, says the new Aero phone is aimed at professionals, especially those who work at the big corporations that contribute the bulk of the Round Rock, Texas-based company's sales.

These customers are more interested in scheduling appointments than downloading games, and the special sauce that will make Dell's phones stand out from the crowd will be business software applications that won't be available on rival products, according to Felice.

The company knows it is making a trade-off in staying close to its business roots rather than going after the mass consumer market like its rivals.

"We're not out to be a handset leader," Felice, president of Dell's consumer, small and medium business division, told the Reuters Global Technology Summit this week. "This is clearly one area where we are not sitting here thinking that our goal is to sell the most phones in the market."

A slew of technology companies from Microsoft Corp to Hewlett-Packard Co is diving into the global smartphone market, as faster wireless services and creative software developers propel the mobile computing trend.

Dell will launch two consumer mobile devices: the Aero smartphone, which runs on Google Inc's Android operating system, in the United States this summer, and the Streak tablet PC in Europe next month.

The company is already selling a first-generation version of Aero, the Android-based Mini 3, in China and Brazil, and is tweaking that technology prior to the U.S. launch.

The end game is to eventually build phones and tablet PCs for large corporations, according to Dell.

"You have got to look at this thing as one big strategy, not just a consumer view," Felice said. "Down the road we will start applying this technology to the commercial sector."

He declined to provide details on the new applications that Dell has built for the phone except to say that it will offer unique features in its GPS and email programs.

"It's our intention to create devices that are more seamless in terms of business applications and productivity tools, not just downloading games," he said.

Dell, the world's third-largest PC maker, gets about 70 percent of its revenue from the business market. In the future, it will look at developing mobile devices suited for tasks performed by healthcare providers, attorneys, financial professionals and other types of workers, Felice said.

Last week, Chief Executive Michael Dell tantalized the tech world with a glimpse of the Streak tablet at a conference, showing off a 5-inch display about half the size of Apple's iPad.

"We think it is a more usable size," Felice said. "We think the applications we are building are going to be really relevant to users."