The rumors that Dell would enter the smart phone business have persisted since then and have even gained heat with the approach of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month, historically a popular venue for vendors to unveil new mobile phones.

For example, online that it plans to launch new smart phones on at the show. officials have not commented on the plan beyond posted on the company's exhibitor page on the Mobile World Congress Web site.

Several analysts have looked for Dell to enter the smart phone business due to its background in PDAs and because of its 2007 hiring of Ron Garriques, who had been the head of phone development at Motorola Inc.

Garrigues was hired to head up all consumer product development at Dell, and had to sign a noncompete agreement that would prevent him from working on any phone until February of 2009, noted , an analyst at ABI Research Inc. in New York. "That deadline for Gerriques is fast approaching," Burden said in an interview. "We all knew Dell would get into smart phones at some point."

But Burden said that Dell could go all the way to the brink of announcing a smart phone and then pull back if the economics are not right. The same thing happened with the Axim PDA, he noted, citing the firm's decision to postpone its launch from 2000 until 2002. Burden said he had first-hand knowledge of that decision, having worked as a consultant to many manufacturers, including Dell, at the time.