Project Ophelia is Dell’s answer to the growing field of Android plug and play HDMI dongles that have hit the market recently. It is attempting to enter a field that is still new to the industry, and this is an obvious attempt to gain dominance in this new market before larger and more successful companies (cough,cough Samsung) get the chance to release a competitor. It is unfortunate for companies like the ones who have put out devices like the Raspberry Pi or Pocket TV because they will now be competing with a multi-billion dollar company who have the Ad revenue and clout to push them out pretty quick. The main concern for Dell should be that they don’t screw up their release and hardware design; in the recent years they haven’t been able to capitalize on the mainstream consumer market, as hard as they’ve tried. Most of their releases have been flops, everything from the dell streak to their convertible tablets have failed in the mainstream market. By going into a market that is relatively sparse with competitors they are, in essence, starting the market to their own terms and they will have some time to see how consumers will react to the idea.
The basics of what they want to release is a sub $100 dollar flash drive sized dongle with 8GB of internal storage, expandable MicroSD slot, Bluetooth so you will be able to pair a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and it will have Wi-Fi built in. The main idea is portability and ease of use, and if they can make it run fluidly on the large screen I could say they have a winner. At this point price isn’t confirmed but if they stick to the sub $100 price it is an impulse buy for many and that could make this a success all on it’s own.
I own the Pocket TV, an original to this market, and it is a really cool design and use case. With a male HDMI connector on one side and USB socket on the other, it runs Android 4.0 ICS and has a remote that use Bluetooth and a wired connection to control the interface on my television. Though it is relatively basic it is a very cool idea and if Dell can harness that cool factor they have the chance of reinventing themselves. They really need to think about the execution of this product because if it is done wrong it has the potential of being really bad but done right it could end up being used all over the world as an alternative to desktop computing (especially if the price is right). A lot of the success is going to depend on the power, peripherals, and price of the device and if they can get the right blend of all three I could easily see myself picking one up.
Via: Android Spin