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It's been a while since I've seen Dell making a splash in the market. They were pretty much making it a few years ago with their Axim series, back when handheld PC's and PDA's were still the rage. Now that the market is making a rapid switch to smartphones, they recently came up with their own prototypes – only to be unceremoniously rejected by all the major carriers. The reason? Their smartphones were too dull.

Apparently Dell's prototypes didn't have anything new or original enough to set it apart from all the other smartphones flooding into the already-tight market. This has sent Dell back to the drawing boards, but don't count it out yet – the smartphone market is going to keep growing for several more years, and Dell seems determined to get its share.

This episode has unfortunately cast a bad spotlight on Dell. The blogosphere has had a field day on the recent rejection. While Apple, Google, Palm, and everyone else is out to snag the “smartphone” synonym, the word “Dell-like” has won the “boring” synonym almost overnight, thanks to some very ballsy bloggers and reporters. (And here I thought Windows Mobile was going to win that dubious award first, but it'll have to be happy with “WinCE,” I suppose...)

Of course, with all the negative publicity, coming up with a smartphone that's actually good might catapult it into popularity soon.

This story struck me as ironic, because I was just writing about the endless “form vs. function” debate with regards to design. Yesterday I wrote about the departure of Google Lead Designer Douglas Bowman, whose criticism of Google's data-centric design culture led to a healthy discussion between form advocates and function hardliners.

In my last article, I implied that it's also important to strike a balance between usability and form factor, unless of course your company depends on either extreme as your brand identity. What I probably failed to mention is that while there are billions of gray areas in between those two extremes, it's important to find a shade of gray that's totally and exclusively your own. I guess Dell encroached in too many gray areas that Nokia, Palm, and the other smartphone developers already had covered.

So what should it do now? I think Dell needs to come up with something truly original. At this point, making their next prototype considerably more interesting should already be a giant leap forward.