The Texas-based firm may hold off until Windows Phone 8, which is expected in late 2012.

Dell may also freeze its overall Android plans because support for existing devices like the Venue and Aero is ramping down. A new Android phone, the Streak Pro 101DL, is coming but may be limited to Japan.

The new strategy has not been confirmed so far. The company has claimed to have a positive view of Windows Phone. However, it was absent from any mention as being a Windows Phone 7 Mango device partner. Maybe it is reconsidering its efforts after some glitches conducted to criticism of its Venue Pro, although the handset was well received.

Like HP, Dell has had some trouble related to credibility in the mobile area, in phones and in tablets as well. Some problems with quality, competitive features, and timely updates have largely kept the company out of the market. The only company that obtained a real success in branching out was Apple.

It is not known whether or not Dell would integrate Ivy Bridge, which promises improvements related to power and performance that Dell might want, like 4K display support. Intel is not expected to ship it before March or even later. It could, however, let Dell show an early prototype.

The information, if accurate, seems to be consistent with the company’s tendency to reveal projects at CES early. Every year, Dell usually holds a press event at an off-site hotel to preview its lineup. The event is sometimes held several months ahead the products shipment.

Dell is known as one of the early participants in this category that may eventually morph into the ultrabook concept of Intel. It chased the original MacBook Air of Apple with the Adamo 13 or later with the radical design of the Adamo XPS. Like Apple at the time, it was obstructed by too high prices and ultraportable Intel chips with very slow graphics and also too short battery lives, reaching 2.5 hours on the Adamo XPS. The XPS was phased out and after several months brought back as a special edition, while the Adamo 13 had several price cuts until being finally dropped in February this year.

Intel is insisting that companies like Dell, Lenovo, Acer or Toshiba create ultrabooks, responding to the great success of Apple’s second-generation MacBook Air design. Apple sees its Air bringing some of the best elements of the iPad to notebooks, while Intel considers it a way of diminishing the damage produced to PC sales by the iPad.

Paul D’Arcy, from PC builder, said that some benefits were obvious when getting a tablet, such as mobility, mainly for retail or health care. However, he expressed his doubt they could ever replace PCs immediately. In his opinion, adding these devices would present another challenge to workers who already support personal computers and smartphones.

D’Arcy says tablets can be substitutes for paper-based systems and are supposed to bring new productivity standards, but they would be no more than companion devices and in no case replacements for existing PCs. According to D’Arcy, as long as strategies are still evolving in the market and the ecosystem is not yet mature, PCs are not dead.

The study, however, revealed significant interest in tablet devices and contradicted in part Dell’s conclusions. For example, 53 percent of IT officers interviewed manifested more than low interest in tablets, the majority being executives that had asked for their own device. Expectations of companies are that a large part of their staff would find tablets more useful. One piece of the survey showed last summer that 82 percent saw official sustenance for smartphones and tablets increasing at least five percent for the next two years.

Some doubts are related to the study that Dell and Intel paid for in February, as both would benefit from keeping the iPad and others out of the workplace. The non-PC tablets of Dell have been limited to the Streak line, which is home oriented, while all its business sales are focused on notebooks and desktops. Intel has a minority stake in tablets because of its Atom processors, but also makes significantly more money from desktop and notebook chips.

Specific effects manifested on corporate buying have not been mentioned, but the iPad has determined a decrease in overall PC sales, as businesses were supposed to delay their system upgrades. At the same time, mobile OS tablets like those of Apple or those based on Google’s platform only in some cases have desktop-level software and usually do not reach the expansion needed or wanted by companies. However, they have appeared into top firms as alternatives for notebooks used for e-mail, presentations or mobile-friendly applications like Salesforce.

The new facility will be a first-class one and the team members will find there an invigorating atmosphere, as Brad Anderson, senior vice president at Dell Enterprise Solutions Group, said. He added that new and vital talent would be attracted to create industry-leading solutions to be delivered to Dells’ customers. As Silicon Valley is a well-known center of technological innovation, Dell intends to bring there very talented specialists.

By the end of this year’s summer or early fall, Dell will bring its new facility online. Initially, the workforce will count 700 employees by the end of the year. A phased expansion will move several teams in the site of 240,000 square feet during the next two years.

Pilot shipments of products in the new packaging will start soon. The first of its devices that will ship this way will be the PowerEdge R710 server in a four-unit Multipack box. The mushroom cushions found inside the boxes may be mixed in the compost heap after shipments.

Energy needed for mushroom cushioning growth comes from carbohydrates and sugars found in agricultural waste products like cotton hulls.

Dell plans to eliminate around twenty million pounds of material used for packaging from shipments before the end of 2012. The new way it ships its products is part of this plan. The company also intends to make 75 percent of its packaging curbside-recyclable by next year.

Official details are almost inexistent but, during a fiscal results call, Dell said the tablet would ship with Android 3.0 and would not use the same mixture of Android 2.2 and the custom Stage user interface as on its Streak 7. As Google has decided to withhold the source for Android 3.0, Dell would only have little room to code a replacement and therefore, for the first time in the history of the company, it could run a stock Android interface.

As the Tegra 2 chip is used in the Streak 7, it is possible to see the same processor in the 10-inch tablet too. In this case, the performance would be similar to all Android 3.0 tablets in the first wave.

This launch is symbolic for the company as this is the first time Dell will attempt to take on Apple’s iPad in a corresponding form factor. Both the original 5-inch Streak 7 and the Streak 7 counted on price to attract customers, in competition with the 9.5-inch iPad. Sales numbers were never available from Dell, but it is supposed to sell tablets only in modest amounts, due to lack of marketing and moderate early reviews.

He explained what might hold the iPad back. As an iPad with a case, a mouse and a keyboard would have a price between $1,500 and $1,600, this would be more than the actual combined cost. Lark believes that Android tablets, present on the market since the fall, have already sold a few million units combined. Three million of them were Galaxy Tab devices and, consequently, Lark is convinced that Google is already in lead and is outpacing Apple.

Although Dell’s history in the tablet area has been long, it has also been lacking significant events. Selling the Latitude XT series and other traditional convertible tablets still continues in niche industries like doctors, artists, or in-the-field workers. Recently, the company entered the mainstream with its Streak, Streak 7 and also Inspiron Duo. All these were limited to only a few sales outlets and have not sold in sufficient quantities for Dell to boast its results.

Apple has sold 14.8 million iPads last year, which is more than all Windows-based tablet PCs ever made. It has been digging the enterprise with eighty percent of the Fortune 100 which uses the iPad in some capacity. Volumes have often been higher than any earlier tablet had. Android 3.0 is the first real tablet-native operating system of Google and has been on the market for only a month. As a consequence, it has not had enough time to prove its efficiency and show whether it could reach the iPad’s level of performance.

Screens go up to 1,080-pixel resolutions. Systems which rely on the quad Core i7 are able to stream a similar resolution over WiDi. The XPS 17 is available with a 3GB GeForce 555M, while the XPS 15 can be equipped with a 2GB NVIDIA GT 540M graphics processor.

The basic model of XPS 15 has a nearly 6lbs weight and a six-cell battery. The other notebook, the XPS 17, weighs 7.4lb and has a battery with the same number of cells. Other new features of both notebooks are Skype HD-certification and USB 3.0 ports.

The price of the XPS 15 starts at $1,049, while the XPS 17 has a minimum price of $899.

Dell’s device is the first unequivocal tablet design of the company and is significantly upgraded in speed with its dual-core Tegra 2 capable of handling Adobe Flash. It has only Android 2.2 so far but will use the recent Stage interface to adapt partly the operating system for its larger screen. Video chat is served by its front and back cameras through Qik and other applications. A faster 3G will give it sufficient speed to stream the Internet TV service of T-Mobile.

The tablet may disappoint some customers because it has only standard Android 2.2, while Motorola as well as many other companies are using the 3.0 version. However, it is so far the cheapest Android tablet coming from a mainstream company.

There is also a 128GB solid-state drive and 4GB of RAM, while the operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium, a 64-bit installation. The 13.4-inch design has relatively broad expansion and includes Ethernet, DisplyPort and two USB ports, one of them with eSATA. The system also sports a 3G modem, AT&T-capable. The battery has six cells and is alike that of Apple’s system. It is sealed in and can last up to five hours.

The Adamo line of Dell was intentionally designed to counter the MacBook Air but has had only a muted response since its unveiling in March last year. Dell has lowered prices and also launched performance upgrades in order to still be competitive. The company also rolled-out its short-lived Adamo XPS. Although neither Dell nor Apple has broken out sales numbers, Apple has had less pressure to upgrade specifications and reduce prices.

Dell’s Adamo 13 with its new price seems to be more cost-efficient than Apple’s 13-inch system with its faster processor and a larger RAM, but it has slower Intel graphics and a shorter battery life. an SD card slot is also missing. The closes equivalent of Dell to Apple’s 11-inch Air is the company’s Inspiron M101z, although it is equipped with a much slower processor Athlon II and has conventional hard drives.