Ever since 2007, there have been off and on rumors about PC maker Dell planning an entry into the smartphone market. Dell’s background in handheld sets and its move of appointing Ron Garriques, who was the head of phone development at Motorola Inc, two years back kept adding fuel to fire! 

And now, with the popular venue for sellers to reveal new mobile phones - the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – round the corner next month, the word about Dell’s prospective foray into the cell world has got even stronger. 

News reports suggest Dell may come up with a line of smartphones, based on Google’s Android and Windows Mobile platforms.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Dell engineers have been working at the phones for over a year. The prototypes of the phones are said to consist of a touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard.

Jeffrey Kagan, an independent wireless and telecom analyst, said it is a good time for Dell to venture into the smartphone market. He added: “The market is lousy compared to great times, but for smart phones, the market is still decent.”

However, analyst Kevin Burden, of ABI Research Inc. in New York, said that Dell can pretty much go to the verge of announcing a smartphone, and then pull back! He cited the earlier dilly-dallying by Dell with regard to the Axim PDA!