A Straight-to-BRIC Strategy
Dell's strategy with it's new smartphone, the Android-powered Mini3, is somewhat of a leapfrogging of usual US handset manufacturer procedure. The company announced this week it's first two major rollouts for the phone, also a first for Dell in this category, are in China, through China Mobile and Brazil, with Claro.
China Mobile, as you may know, is the world's largest mobile operator with over 500 million customers, the upper end of which continue to desire well-made handsets from international brands. Dell claims to be the leading maker of 3G netbooks in the country, so offering a smartphone is a nice extension—and it makes a great place to trial a new product, as well as one running on a new platform like Android.
Brazil, while a smaller market, also shows promise for high-end mobile brands, Like China and India, Nokia and others have targeted Brazil as an area of strong future growth, and Nokia has gone so far as to place a design studio in the country, as it has in Beijing as well.
This move by Dell marks a minor but interesting new turn in mobile introductions. In the past, high end devices would be pushed out first in Europe or the US (excluding Japanese and Korean-focused devices). Clearly Dell sees the markets as mature enough not only to support a new mobile maker, but also mature enough to appreciate its brand extension into a new area, and be ready for something as new and fast moving as Android. It's probably right, which marks a new phase of confident technology consumption in the BRICs overall, not just taking cheaper local brands or becoming afterthoughts for global brands, but standing up as the entry market for something wanted elsewhere.
Posted by Scott Smith
