Somebody just unleashed Dell's smartphone and tablet roadmap for the next two years onto the folks at WPCentral and Android Central, and the biggest surprise is how heavily Dell -- a big Windows partner -- is betting on Android.
The next two Dell tablets will run Android 3.0 "Honeycomb," with a Windows 7 tablet due out in late 2011. Two more Honeycomb tablets are planned for 2012. Dell has a space for Windows 8 at the beginning of 2012, but no tablets appear on the roadmap yet.
This is a concrete example of how Microsoft's slow response to the tablet market could hurt the company -- its hardware partners may not be willing to wait for Windows 8, but are going to release competing tablets on Android in the meantime.
The smartphone roadmap shows that the Dell Venue will come out in May 2011 in both Windows Phone 7 and Android versions. After that, there's only one more Windows Phone product -- it's called Wrigley and wil run the next update to Windows Phone 7 (known internally as Mango, according to reports). The next two phones, due out in late 2011 and early 2012, will both run the next version of Android, which Dell refers to as "Ice Cream" but which might actually be called "Ice Cream Sandwich."
Here's the tablet roadmap:
And here's the smartphone roadmap:
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
