Baidu has been in the news lately with its foray into a new mobile operating system designed for smartphones and tablets for the Chinese market. The project is named “Yi” and Baidu will be making its own applications that are a spin-off from popular Google branded ones. You will have your maps, ebooks, downloadable music, cloud storage, and a custom SDK for developers.
Today Dell announced that it had partnered with Baidu to bring its Dell Streak 5 tablet and run the new YI operating system in it. “We have a partnership with Baidu and you know we have the Streak 5 tablet, so the partnership will be in that space,” said a Dell spokeswoman, adding that both firms were also cooperating on the mobile handset front.
The partnership according to Gartner Research will not be on the low end devices that proliferate the Chinese market. It will target mid and high range tablets and phones with Dell at the forefront. No specific date has been given for the Streak to make its ways into the new relationship, but I surmise near November we will see something.
The Dell Streak 5 tablet was recently discontinued in the USA last month and may get a new lease in life in China. Other companies are moving into that market to take advantage of the emerging wired population and the rising middle class.
Check out the video below giving the full promotional details on the new YI OS that the Dell Streak will run on.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
