Dell officially says goodbye to smartphones

Dell is quitting the smartphone business more or less for good, according to a Thursday report from Forbes.

Jeff Clarke, Dell's Vice Chairman and President of Global Operations and End User Computing Solutions, dropped the news at the Dell World conference on Wednesday.

China became Dell's lone remaining smartphone market earlier this year when the Round Rock, Texas company stopped selling its smartphones in the U.S.

Now even China will have to live without Dell smartphones, and Clarke reportedly said Dell will not re-enter the smartphone market any time soon.

Building a business on Android

Dell smartphones are a thing of the past, partly because "it needs a lot of investments to really be successful," Clarke told Forbes.

Clarke reportedly said that Android business is a "content play," meaning it's more about what you can sell on top of smartphone hardware than the hardware itself.

"Amazon is selling books and Google is making it up with search," he said. "So far we couldn't find a way to build a business on Android,"

Hello, Windows tablets

Dell is reportedly in the fifth year of a transformation phase, and for now will focus on Windows tablets and laptop/tablet hybrids like the XPS 10, XPS 12 and Latitude 10.

These latest Dell devices all run Windows 8 or Windows RT.

But Clarke could not simply leave it at that - "It doesn't mean we're not looking at Android," he told Forbes.

"You should come and see what's in our labs," he added.

If Forbes does not take you up on that offer, Mr. Clarke, TechRadar will be waiting by the phone.