[WiseWeasel]

There could still be an opportunity for them to gain some traction in mobile devices, possibly if they could leverage their PC cred and release more customer-centric Android phones and tablets with unlocked firmware, and a focus on early (and sustained) adoption of OS updates and empowerment of users, business IT departments, hobbyists and hackers.

One big disadvantage for Dell is a lack of software design expertise, which limits the depth of their contribution to the computing state-of-the-art. This also makes it very difficult for a company like Dell to differentiate itself from their competitors, and be more than simply an interchangeable part of a commodity computing ecosystem, one in which they no longer have any kind of efficient manufacturing and distribution chain advantage. A further disadvantage is that Dell has traditionally had a lack of relations with retailers and distributors, which worked fine when you were selling a familiar product with incrementally faster specs, but not so much when you need to educate your customers about a new type of product.

Ultimately, Dell's true success (represented by a large growth in stock value) would seem to depend on getting back ahead of the curve to drive large growth in demand, for example with advanced form factors such as head-mounted display technology and wearable computing/NFC. They'll have to do something to bide their time until they can deliver a complete novel mass-market solution of some kind, which will have to be very polished and obviously valuable to consumers if they are to have any kind of lasting advantage over their competitors. This would require the acquisition of some serious software and UX design chops, along with a rethinking of their distribution to feature 3rd party retailers, and a shift to marketing something truly novel.

On second thought, that other alternative you mentioned is starting to look pretty good.