Dell To Launch Seven Inch iPad Competitor ‘In Weeks’

Dell plans on launching its seven-inch tablet within the “next few weeks”, according to a company executive quoted in The Wall Street Journal.

The executive, Dell’s Greater China president Amit Midha, also suggested that a Dell 10-inch tablet would make an appearance within the next six months to a year. This disclosure may not have pleased his CEO Michael Dell.

“It was shown off at OracleWorld by Michael last week and we’ll be launching very, very soon – within the next few weeks,” Midha is quoted as saying.

Changing And Evolving

A Dell seven-inch tablet would follow its five-inch Streak, which was launched by O2 in the UK on June 4. The Streak runs Google’s Android 1.6 operating system and features front- and rear-facing cameras. O2’s data-only tariffs start at £25 a month, its voice and data plans start at £35 a month, and business tariffs are available from £25.58 a month. Pay and Go customers can also buy the device for £399.

Michael Dell revealed the Dell Streak seven-inch during a presentation at this month’s Oracle OpenWorld but remained closed-lipped about specifications or a possible release date. In addition to the growing tablet family, Dell’s forays into mobility include the 10-inch Inspiron Duo, which can be used as either a tablet or a netbook; Dell plans on using a dual-core Atom chip for that device.

“Michael made the point that devices are changing and evolving rapidly to keep up with the way users want to get their data – anytime, anywhere,” read a posting on the Direct2Dell corporate blog referencing the OracleWorld appearance.

Dell also plans to profit from the backend infrastructure that supports those mobile devices. During a summer conference for financial analysts, Michael Dell suggested that the burgeoning mobile market represented a chance to increase sales of servers and other hardware.

“There has to be servers and storage to support all the data that is being pulled by users and this is an exciting opportunity for us,” he told analysts at the event.

The Dell Streak and its successors face competition not only from the Apple iPad, which rekindled interest in the consumer tablet segment earlier this year, but also upcoming products such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Research In Motion’s PlayBook, a BlackBerry-themed tablet unveiled on September 27. Both the PlayBook and Galaxy Tab feature seven-inch screens.

Rumours have also circulated that Apple is itself preparing a seven-inch iPad. That scuttlebutt extends back to August, when Digitimes Research predicted a seven-inch iPad due in the first quarter of 2011 and loaded with an ARM Cortex A9-based processor.