Dell's Project Ophelia debuts at CES 2013 - Cloud Computing is the Bling Ring of Power to kick Dell into the Portable Computing Game

Even as Dell appears ripe for a takeover bid by rivals HP (Hewlett Packard) and Lenovo in March 2013 due to the refusal of shareholders Southeastern and T. Rowe to accept Michael Dell’s Share buyout offer in a bid to go private as stated in “Dell’s Crafted LBO Pitch Gets Messy as Carl Icahn Circles”, published March 7, 2013 7:35 PM ET By Serena Saitto & Dina Bass, Bloomberg, the No. 1 computer maker is still innovating in January 2013.

What a difference three (3) months makes! 

CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake Management LLC are attempting a US$24.4 billion dollar buy-out, with assistance from Microsoft which pitched in US$2 billion as reported in “It's official: Dell's going private in $24.4B deal” published February 5, 2013 6:43 AM PST by Shara Tibken, CNET News. This effectively makes it a bid of US$13.65 per share bid. However, this easy path to privatization and more control over product design and decision making already appears to be collapsing .

The Board, led by Blackstone Group and billionaire investor Carl Icahn, which initially accepted the bid offer, is now apparently having a change of heart and is now pushing for a higher bid price closer to US$15.00 a share. This as is allowed in the publicly traded company which stipulates a “go-shop” period of 45 days to facilitate competitive bids from interested outside bidders,  a period which ends on Friday March 22^nd 2013.

This isn’t easy game to play or even to get into; competing bidders who didn’t make a successful bid have to forfeit their hand, Poker Style, with a termination fee of $450 million, with successful bidders only having to pony up a $180 million termination fee. Like I said, Poker style.

Meanwhile, Dell’s still disrupting the PC World, as during the weeklong extravaganza that was the CES 2013 (Computer Electronics Show) in early January 2013, Project Ophelia made its debut as reported in “Dell announces Project Ophelia, a USB stick that uses the cloud to make any monitor a PC”, published January 8, 2013 By Anna Washenko, DigitalTrends.

Project Ophelia, which get its name from a tormented female character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is designed and developed by Dell WYSE, their Cloud Computing arm that they had acquired in April of 2012 as stated in “Dell buys Wyse, plays 'cloud client' game”, published April 2, 2012 05:39 GMT (22:39 PDT) By Larry Dignan, ZDNet and “Dell Buys Wyse to Continue Evolution to 'Not Really a PC Company'”, published Apr 2, 2012 10:06 AM By Tony Bradley, PCWorld.

The device is basically a USB Stick computer in the same league as the Raspberry Pii as described in my blog article entitled “The Evolution of the Raspberry Pi Computer into a Mainstream Wearable Computer - How to teach Computer Programming using Flying Sword of Dragon Gate” requiring the user to BYOKMD (Bring your own Mouse, Keyboard and Display).

The specs are impressive as they are groundbreaking for Dell as quickly summarized in “Dell Ophelia Project, your computer in your pocket”, published January 17 2013 by Diana D'Cruz, TechieBuszzie:

Specs for Project Ophelia

1.      Android 4.0 aka Jelly Bean

2.      Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) and Bluetooth

3.      Powered via the USB port

Features for Project Ophelia

1.      Access of WYSE Cloud Platform

2.      Cloud Storage for Work file for Remote Recovery

3.      Multiple user support

4.      Secure and direct access for cloud Platforms from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware

5.      Work Related Programs and Apps as well as Games

This may in fact be Dell’s way of announcing competition in this space, as the product, which is effectively a Cloud Based Thin Client, slated to go on sale in the Third or Fourth Quarter of 2013 with a very competitive price of US$50 as stated in “Meet Ophelia, Dell's $50 plug-in, cloud-based PC challenger”, published January 17, 2013 By Ted Samson, InfoWorld.

Agreeably, it’s also my favourite and most promising product to emerge out of CES 2013 (Computer Electronics Show) that’s NOT a smartphone as noted in “Dell's 'Project Ophelia' might be my favorite gadget at CES”, published January 8, 2013 19:29 GMT (11:29 PST) By Andrew Nusca, ZDNet.

Cloud Computing is already getting a big boost in the form of support for Google Chrome OS Chromebook. Samsung, Acer and now more recently since this year Lenovo and HP also debuting their own Chromebooks, mainly geared at the high School and University market as noted in my blog article entitled “Lenovo and HP now making Chromebooks - Google Chrome OS is being Built from the Cloud Up and Microsoft experiences the Side Effects”.

In that very same article I had speculated that the computer makers are ganging up on Microsoft by supporting Google Chrome and may eventually sometime in the future announce their own Chromebook.

Looks like Dell’s WYSE go its mind set on taking advantage on the growing Portable or Wearable Computing market, effectively disrupting its own line of PC with this potentially hot seller of a product. It may also be an early indication of where Michael Dell’s heading with this PC killer as noted in “Is Dell looking to kill PCs with “Project Ophelia”?”, published January 15 2013, 10:10pm EST by Sean Gallagher, ARSTechnica.

It wouldn’t be at all surprising.

The bottom is falling out of the traditional PC market with PC and Laptop Chip AMD struggling through a weak Fourth Quarter of 2012 and facing even weaker 2013 demand for PC and Laptops as noted in “AMD limps through Q4, and 2013 doesn't look much better”, published January 22, 2013 2:41 PM PST by Zack Whittaker, CNET News.

Intel is also winding down the PC Motherboard business with a renewed focus on Tablets in 2013 after a very weak Fourth Quarter of 2012 as noted in “Intel to wind down desktop circuit board business”, published January 22, 2013 4:00 PM PST by Brooke Crothers, CNET News.

PC and Laptops are, along with Printers and Game consoles, being slowly being killed off by the Apple iPhone and now the Apple iPad and its would-be motley crue of Google Android clones of Apple’s innovation as predicted in my Geezam blog article entitled “How the Apple iPad killed Ultrabooks, Printing and the Mouse as the World Rediscovers Tablets”.

According to Adobe’s Digital Index Report, 8% of traffic is now originating from Tablets, surpassing smartphones which contribute to 7% of global Internet Traffic as noted in “Tablets surpass smartphones in driving global Web traffic", published March 7, 2013 5:19 PM PST by Dara Kerr, CNET News. 

Most likely driven by the most popular Tablet aside from the Apple iPad, the Amazon Kindle Fire as stated in the article “Kindle leads Android Tablet market, but the Nexus 7 is gaining speed” published JANUARY 28, 2013 BY JOSHUA SHERMAN, DigitalTrends.  According to analyst Localytics, the Amazon Kindle Fire commands an impressive 33% of the Android Tablet Market and is No. 2 in the Tablet race overall after the Apple iPad.   

The Amazon Kindle Fire is a shopaholic’s dream, making Portable Computing on the Tablet a great way to shop online anytime, anyplace as concluded in my Geezam blog article entitled “Amazon is Legally Blonde as the Kindle Fire HD Upgrade is CEO Bezos’s Confessions of an Online Shopaholic”.

So here’s hoping that CEO Michael Dell triumphs over his enemies in his bid to take the company private and push the company towards Cloud Computing and mobile Computing in the form of Smartphones and Tablets. This as he needs to succeed in order for Dell to survive in the coming “Post-PC Era” which based on the above evidence, is already beginning to affect other traditional PC Makers. Cloud Computing is The Bling Ring (2013) of Power to kick Dell into the Portable Computing Game.