Dell Really Hoping It Won’t Have to Discontinue Next Tablet

The short, unhappy life of the Streak hasn’t quelled Dell’s ambitions for the tablet market. The company is already plotting its comeback.

Dell, which scrapped the Streak just six months ago, is preparing to take another run at the tablet space, this time with a full-fledged consumer device it’s hoping to launch in late 2012.

“You will see us enter this market in a bigger way toward the end of the year,” Dell Chief Commercial Officer Steve Felice told Reuters, adding that the company has been “taking its time” developing this new device, in the hope of saving it from the fate of its predecessor.

Felice said little else about its new tablet, declining to specify an operating system, though he did note that both Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows 8 were options. “We like Windows 8, but we continue to develop with Android, as well,” he said. “We are still going to be more choice-driven, based on the feedback we get from customers.”

Dell also appears to be putting a lot more thought into its approach to the market this time around. Certainly, the company seems to understand that tablets don’t succeed on hardware or software alone, but on the ecosystem surrounding them.

“When you are talking about PC, people are more focused on the hardware itself,” Felice said. “When you are talking about the tablet or the smartphone, people are interested in the overall environment it’s operating in. As we have matured in this, we are spending a lot more time in the overall ecosystem.”