One device that i am hugely is excited for running android is the Dell Mini 5. On the North American front the device has not got much attention , although we did grab a video of it at CES 2010 (Dell Mini 5 at CES 2010). I would love to see all the features a device of this size and potential power is bringing to us. Could this device alone beat out any hope for Apple’s Tablet being successful granted this device has some real power behind it (probably not)? It has passed the FCC on AT&T 3G bands, and Dell has taken the stance Entertainment device first and phone second, and the way people are using Smartphones today you can be mad at them for taking this approach. For specs on the Device keep up with our Blog and we will make sure to keep you updated on the device.
Snuggle up with the black Dell Streak/Mini 5 prototype, which has “Model M01M” marked under the battery cover—probably the most official name to date. Spec-wise the M01M sums up what’s been speculated all along—A 5-inch 800×480 touchscreen, Android 1.6, 1GHz CPU (presumably Snapdragon, as revealed by the teardown), WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G of some sort, 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, front-facing camera, and the same 1530mAh battery as the one in the teardown. The price? ¥7,500, which converts to a whopping $1,098 in US cash, but bear in mind that this doesn’t reflect the M01M’s actual retail price for whenever it might launch.
October 6, 1997. Dell is the number one PC seller in the world, and are just over a decade old. The young company can seem to do no wrong, and has returned investors a 2,800% gain in the past 5 years.
Apple had already seen it’s heyday in the previous decade, and has now fallen on hard times. Over the same 5 year time period, the older company experienced massive turbulence, and had lost around 50% of it’s value.
Michael Dell gets on stage and is presented with the question: now that Steve Jobs is back at Apple, if you were him, what would you do to fix the company?
“What would I do? I’d shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders”
Fast forward 13 years. Since then, Apple has seen a 3,500% gain in it’s value. Dell, on the other hand, has seen almost none, at the moment it stands at a mere 10%.
When looking at a shorter, 5 year time period, things look even bleaker for Dell: a 60% loss in value (meanwhile, Apple is around 500%).
So to Michael Dell: “Your company has lost 60% of it’s value over the past 5 years. What will you do to fix it?”
I’m guessing his answer won’t be what it was 13 years ago.
In my ‘day job’ as one of the Director of a Social Media (ROI) consultancy firm called Media Focus UK Ltd I am always on the look out for fantastic thought leaders and columnists to follow and Gordon MacMillan at Brand Republic is one of those. He stays three paces ahead of others in thinking and can simply express what many feel needs to be said in readable and enjoyable terms.
In his latest posting (link below) he discusses the perennial problem of 3 out of every 4 marketeers or communication people not really understanding where social media fits as a part of their major promotional strategies and that they are ‘confused about the role.’ He cites someone who is not – Howard Schultz – the boss of Starbucks.
Schultz is asked in an interview which one channel will take precedence, here’s his answer:
“I think social media is a natural extension of our brand because we want to do things that are unexpected, and to speak to all sorts of people who are engaged with social media. It’s tough to measure but there is an incremental benefit to sales.”
MacMillan goes on “No one questions the value of PR or thinks too much about assigning ROI to it. It is clearly done well worth its weight in gold” and that there is one thing (the PR thing) that struck him, “Howard Schultz must think about ROI when he thinks about the 200% rise in profits at Starbucks in the last quarter.”
MacMillan continues “Schultz must think about ROI when he discusses how the coffee chain attracted 5.1 million Facebook fans and 768, 527 followers and how according to Nielsen the time spent by users on social networking sites has more than doubled since December 2007. Nielsen said last month that consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009.”
A Chinese proverb (I forget who said it now – perhaps Lao Tse) said something along the lines of “If you want people to follow you, walk behind them.” Meaning, I’d guess you can persuade people easier if you are one of them and are listening to what they think, feel and are responding to them and valuing them all. Isn’ t that what Starbucks are doing in this example?
MacMillan concludes “If you want to talk to these people you’d better be where they are. I’ll mention Dell again. You kind of have to and while the $6.5m it made via Twitter is a drop in the ocean it is part of a growing drop that many savvy firms are part of.”
Free downloads of real life examples on how social media is changing the way business works – taken from newspapers ‘09
Making Money from Social Media – real world examples
Better targeted advertising – real world examples
Corporate reputation disasters – real world examples
Changing face of journalism Real life examples 2009
Dell has unveiled a 5-inch Android-powered tablet PC at CES, which is called Slate for now. The device comes with a SIM slot so you can hook up to 3G service for Internet connectivity, it has a 5-megapixel camera and It’s believed that Dell is prepping similar devices with different screen sizes and form factors.
This episode of the Smellcast covers a lot of ground.
Toppie talks about doing a project for his Dad. Then he jibber jabbers about going downtown to get high speed internet access. It’s about time Toppie. Welcome to the twenty first century. He also has a new flash drive storage unit thingy that seems to excite him.
Also, a brief listen to a podcast called Ding Da Bell that Toppie dearly loves. It really cracks him up big time. Ding and the Bell are so sweet and lovable. You can find them over at dingdabell.com and also on Itunes.
Listen as Toppie fiddles with his new flash drive. Riveting stuff. No, really.
Toppie’s new computer is acting up. Toppie fears it will never really work right. This leads him to once again extole the virtues of his old, now defunct Dell computer.
Toppie reveals tantilizing evidence of a deep dark family secret — were Toppie’s grandparents ever really married??? There’s some obscure document signed by some strangers that a marriage was apparently performed, but, as we just realized, no wedding photos!! Mysterious!
Talk to your parents! Talk to your grandparents and ask them questions about thier life before they’re gone. You will be glad you did.
Please click the link below to listen to the Smellcast/episode 23.
I have been working this evening on getting programs loaded back onto the new hard drive that I have installed into my computer.
The hard drive that came with my system appears to be failing. I was getting alert message all weekend. I contacted Dell and after running the diagnostic software they determined yes the drive was bad and sent a new one overnight.
They put an image of my operating system and stuff that came with the computer and I’m installing what I put on after I got it. Of course, Dell forgot a few things… I have downloaded from their support site two things but I believe they are going to have to send me a Roxio disc because I don’t have one with what they sent last year. Overall their customer service has been great and I have no complaints in that area with this situation.
The fun part is now going to be getting my iPhone backup into the new system so that I won’t lose everything. I have downloaded a program that is suppose to make this transition easier. I will find out tomorrow evening when I sit down to get this done.
