Dell May Be Signaling New Type of Innovation WIth Lattitude-On

I have always thought it was at best foolish, and at worst irresponsible for companies like Dell, HP, and through the course of history, their smaller rivals, to rely exclusively on shrink-wrapped software from Microsoft to create their user experience.

For years, the big PC players have essentially offered no differentiators at all beyond price, sales channel, and support. In other words they abdicated almost all product development to Microsoft and Intel. As a result, Apple has had to itself the playing field of PC innovation, while everyone else on the PC side played me too.

Last week, Dell made an announcement that in my mind has not gotten nearly enough attention, and that suggests a change may be afoot. They announced a new laptop called the Latitude-On.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a big deal.

The basic idea of the new Latitude is that the machine will have a second ARM based processor and Linux operating system along side the standard Intel processor and Windows OS. This machine within a machine will provide a super fast, lightweight, battery friendly environment for doing things like email, web browsing, and perhaps other communications tasks. It will be “instant on”, so you will always be able to get to your basic functionality, and yet you will get a battery life measured in days and not hours when in this mode.

And while the Latitude’s specific feature set does indeed sound enticing, what is really striking to me is the level of innovation involved here for a non-Apple PC vendor. This is a radical sea change for an industry that for at least a decade and probably more like 15 years, has done almost nothing innovative at all. Innovation in the PC industry has meant little more than going to the mailbox to download the next reference design or software update from Microsoft and Intel.

While, to be sure, this is no signal that Dell is about to become the next Apple, this kind of thinking puts Dell well ahead of their other PC compatible competitors. Dell certainly did not invent the instant on concept, but being willing to do something that does not come from MicroTel is a big step for a company that still really won't even buy chips from Intel competitor AMD.

Of course to really excel at this type of innovation requires a different type of organizational DNA than any of these companies have had. Doing software is very different than doing hardware. And doing integrated software is very different from typical desktop software. But while the challenge is great, the risks of continuing to add essentially no value add at all are far greater.

And so, while this is indeed an exciting signal from Dell, I will be very curious to see if this is just a one-off, or if this is indeed a realization of the necessity to innovate beyond the narrow template of the old school PC mindset.