May 07, 2009, 1:11 PM — Bsquare, a developer of mobile software, issued a press release yesterday that seemed to imply that Dell was going to release an Android-based netbook. The press release has since been pulled and Dell says the claim was erroneous, but the cat's out of the bag now, and the rumors are flying. Of course, it's an exciting prospect, but Dell isn't ready to 'fess up just yet.
There have been rumors for months that Dell, as well as other PC makers, have been planning Android-based netbooks. A handful of manufacturers, including HP, have actually made some noise about researching the possibility, although the Android netbook just doesn't exist yet. There is however, one confirmed Android network coming out later this year from a Chinese company.
So what's going on with the retracted press release? It's just speculation, but it could be that Bsquare jumped the gun in making information public that Dell wasn't ready to share. Somewhere, in some anxious PR agent's file folder, there may well be some documents that confirm the deal. Bsquare specifically mentioned Dell in the rogue release--and this makes me think that there's something we're not being told yet. It wouldn't be surprising at all if Dell has a secret Android project going on in its skunkworks.
Specifically, the press release said they are announcing that they will be "porting Adobe's Flash Lite 3.17 technology onto Dell Netbooks running Google's Android platform." That sounds pretty definitive to me, even if they did pull the release a day later.
