US computer giant Dell announced on Friday it is teaming up with China Mobile and Brazil's Claro to market a new touchscreen smartphone powered by Google's Android operating system.
The Texas-based Dell, the world's third-largest personal computer maker, said the "Dell Mini 3" is expected to hit stores in China by late November and stores in Brazil by the end of the year.
China Mobile is the country's biggest mobile phone operator with more than 500 million subscribers while Claro, owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and part of the America Movil mobile network, boasts 42 million subscribers in Brazil.
Dell sells netbook computers in China and Ron Garriques, president of Dell Global Consumer Group, said entering the smartphone category is a "logical extension of Dell's consumer product evolution over the past two years."
A China Mobile spokesperson said the introduction of the new smartphone, whose details will be revealed later this year, is "an important milestone in the long term partnership between China Mobile and Dell."
Joao Cox, Claro's president, said the company "is proud of being the first wireless carrier in the world offering the 3G version of Dell's smartphone."
Dell's entry into the smartphone market has been rumored for months.
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Dell is teaming up with US telecom colossus AT&T, exclusive carrier for the Apple iPhone in the United States, to launch an Android-based smartphone next year.
Dell said Friday that it has also reached agreements with telecom providers in Australia, Europe, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States but provided no further details.
A growing number of US telecom carriers and manufacturers have been adopting Google's open-source Android software in bids to challenge the iPhone and the Blackberry from Research in Motion in the growing smartphone market.
Technology industry tracker Gartner predicts that Android-based smartphones will capture 14 percent of the global market by the year 2012, as compared with a mere two percent today, according to a report in Computerworld.
