Mobile World Congress is underway in Barcelona. If you’ve been keeping up today, you’ve seen all the Windows Phone 7 Series goodness, and if you’re interested in tracking more developments in the mobile technology space, I’d recommend that you check Techmeme or the Google news feed for MWC over the next couple of days.
One of the Dell folks who will be there is our new GM of Tablet Devices Neeraj Choubey. He recently joined Dell after several roles where he had the opportunity to work with mobile technology. Check out his full bio here.
I got a chance to sit down with him for a few minutes before he headed out to Barcelona where we got a chance to mobile technologies, Dell’s role within them, where the tablet fits from Dell’s perspective and more.
Here are some of the details from our discussion:
How do you define your role within Dell?
A key personal interest of mine is to make sue that I help Dell innovate in the mobile devices space, so that we’re doing more than what everyone else does. My goal is to make developers and customers excited to push the envelope with devices that Dell provides.
What are some mobile technologies that interest you?
There’s lots of interesting technologies on the horizon. There’s some established technologies like Skype which have already gained a lot of traction with tens of millions of active users. Skype and it’s ubiquity has a lot of potential for us and our device strategy. WiMAX is something that’s really interesting, not only as it’s built out in the United States but globally as well. WiMAX is really about changing the economics of wireless. It offers a big data pipe at lower prices. In other regions of the world, I think it can be important not as a mobile replacement but as a DSL replacement. Google Voice is another interesting one. It provides a great way for managing multiple mobile devices, but it’s also great for devices that don’t have a phone number associated with it.There’s one school of thought that I need one device that does everything and another extreme toward good general devices that maximize flexibility. For Dell, we’re interested in fitting in between those extremes with devices like the Mini 5. Google Voice is one of those tools that can help is fit that space.
Where does Dell see a need for a 5-inch tablet device?
There’s several places where a smartphone isn’t enough. Our tablet has a screen that’s bigger than other smartphones and smaller than netbooks or notebooks. I think many users will see it as a useful media consumption device.
What’s your view of Flash?
The majority of web content that users consume is in Flash. While there are alternatives to delivering multimedia content, Flash continues to be a key component of the web. When we look at the tablet space, we want to deliver a seamless experience to customers whether they’re browsing the web on a desktop, a netbook or something like the Dell Mini 5.
Speaking of Flash and the Mini 5, I noticed that Adobe has published a demo of Flash running on it. Take a look to check out inline video and Flash-based games on the Mini 5. More to come on this front.