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Dell retires Venue and Venue Pro in the US, future smartphone plans unclear

Dell retires Venue and Venue Pro in the US, future smartphone plans unclear

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Dell has stopped sales of the Venue and Venue Pro smartphones in the US, leaving a gap in its product lineup that the company has not confirmed it will be filling.

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Dell Venue Pro stock 640
Dell Venue Pro stock 640

When Dell killed off the Streak 7 tablet last year, it was careful to stress that it had no plans to move away from the mobile market, touting the Venue and Venue Pro as proof of its commitment. However, PC World reports that the company has now stopped sales of both of those devices in the US — and Dell's smartphone ambitions moving forward aren't clear. Members of both the Venue and Streak product lines are stil available in countries such as South Korea and Japan, but canceling sales in the US without ready replacements certainly raises questions. It comes as Dell attempts to redefine its business across multiple product categories, with the President of Dell's Enterprise Group recently going so far as to say that Dell was "no longer a PC company." While a company spokesperson did confirm to PC World that Dell will be launching new mobile devices in 2012, they declined to confirm that smartphones would be among them. We've reached out to Dell for further comment.

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Update: We've received a response from a Dell spokesperson on the vague future of the company's mobile products:

Products end-of-life all the time, as you know, and sometimes folks mistake an EOL as a signal for a larger strategic change when it’s not. While Venue and Venue Pro are no longer for sale in the States, they’re still available in many markets through retail, distributors and carrier partners. And remember that mobility products typically have shorter lifecycles than laptops or desktops. With that said, Dell is looking forward to offering new products and expanding our mobility solutions portfolio in the future. So we’re committed to the mobility space and Dell’s unique position allows us to provide more than just hardware, but also software and entire solutions. In fact, if you look at a key regions, like China where the next 1 billion people are expected to come online, we have a huge number of product offerings. So the main take away should be that every product has a lifecycle, but Dell is committed to mobility, so just keep watching us through the year.