Dell Elaborates on Its Windows 8 Tablet and Notebook Plans

Like HP, Dell has finished summarizing its financial exploits during the latest fiscal quarter. Fortunately though, we have more than speculation when it comes to future plans.

Dell is one of the companies allowed to launch a tablet running Windows RT alongside Microsoft's Surface.

Recently, with the second quarter of fiscal year 2012 over, ended at the end of July, the company had to hold the obligatory conference call with financial analysts.

Among the discussions regarding laptops and everything else up its sleeve, Dell mentioned that it was trying not to be too optimistic about Windows 8.

It also refused to specify whether its Windows RT slates would really run an ARM processor or Dell would use an Intel or AMD x86 CPU instead.

Considering that, in the latter case, the term used would probably be Windows 8 rather than RT, we are leaning towards the former. If nothing else, it will make life hard for the likes of Archos 101 XS.

Still, even though Dell will be heavily involved in Windows 8 devices, it is trying not to depend too much on them, or tablets as a whole.

"We have seen data that would suggest only about 50% of that Windows 7 transition is complete [in the corporate segment], and that is got to continue and will continue as we sort of play out over the next several quarters here, before anybody really thinks about Windows 8 on the commercial side," said Brian Gladden, chief financial officer of Dell, during a conference call with financial analysts.

"We are positioned to be a leader in addressing the emerging corporate BYOD trend with our current XPS 13, 14 and 15 notebooks, and their upcoming tablets and converged devices. In addition, you will see new Windows 8 ultrabooks, all-in-ones, tablets and converged devices in the fourth quarter and headed into next year."