Although most people associate the name Dell with either desktop workstations, PC monitors or notebooks, the company has also ventured, over time, into other fields of the consumer electronics's market as well, including that of portable MP3 players. However, the return of Michael Dell to the company's helm brought about the axing of some of those projects, including the company's involvement in the aforementioned field of portable media players.

However, around last summer, rumors began to float on the Internet regarding Dell's possible comeback to the MP3 players' market, in the form of a very small portable player, accompanied by a media jukebox and a file sharing application built on the Zing platform.

Nevertheless, the rumor mill never seems to stop and now the reporters from Wall Street Journal (the ones who apparently also brought up the rumors in the first place) are claiming (based on the statements of an inside source) that the plans for the portable device have been scrapped, or at least postponed for an indefinite period of time. Work on the Zing-based platform will continue, though, which means that the company might have some music sharing-related plans after all.

Quite obviously, the move has been linked to the weak economy, Dell apparently preferring to focus on its traditional areas of expertise rather than a new field, where it's got very little experience. Thus, the same inside source mentioned earlier also told the reporters from the WSJ that the company plans to release quite a large number of desktop and notebook models by the year's end, probably in order to further consolidate its position on a market that's very likely to slump in the first half of 2009.

The second reason why Dell has canned the project is most likely related to the serious upgrades of both iPod and Zune players, plus their much higher market share. It's quite clear that in the near future, customers will most likely go for well-established and successful business models (like the iTunes/iPod) instead of new products, so Dell's decision is a pretty logical one, after all.


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