Dell To Axe Adamo Rival To MacBook Air

The Dell Adamo is reportedly on its way out after a source told Cnet that Dell will discontinue the Adamo laptop line and brand name, after almost two years of lackluster sales.

Thin and lovely, machined from a single piece of lightweight aluminium, and launched as the thinnest PC in the world, the Adamo was Dell’s answer to the Apple MacBook Air. In the end, however, it perhaps only truly rivalled Apple in the appeal of its advertising campaign.

The Adamo weighed just under 4 pounds, to the MacBook Air’s 3 pounds, and was criticised for having a too-weak battery and a too-light processor. It was also pricey, starting at $1,999 (£1,244).

Price Cut

Since the Adamo’s March 2009 launch, Dell has brought the price down – slashing its Adamo Onyx to as low as $800 (£498) this past holiday season. But Apple’s newest MacBook Air line is tough to beat, starting at just 2.3 pounds, featuring all-flash storage, solid battery life and a starting price of $999 (£622).

According to Cnet, the spirit of the Adamo brand – super-thin, refined and design-minded – will live on in a new design, set to debut during the next six months. The new design, however, will fall under one of Dell’s existing consumer PC brands – Inspiron, XPS, etc. – and will be, according to Cnet’s source, as compelling, if not more, than the Adamo was.

The Adamo was also tied to former Dell executive Ron Garriques, who announced in November that he was leaving the company, following a restructuring that eliminated his group. Garriques was hired from Motorola in 2007 and charged with revamping Dell’s consumer products and brand identity. The devices he helped to promote, however, failed to win over consumers in quite the way Dell would have liked.

In addition to the Adamo, Dell faced some early stumbles with its consumer-geared smartphone. Its Streak tablet, a device with a 5-inch display – versus the 9.7-inch display on the Apple iPad, and the 7-inch on the Samsung Galaxy Pad and other Android-running versions – was commendably early to market, but was criticised as being too small for a tablet but too big for a smartphone. (Again to its credit, it offered cellular connectivity.)

Strategy Change

The elimination of Garriques’ group, a Dell spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal at the time, had nothing to do with Garriques, and everything to do with its smartphones and tablets growing to be more than just “a consumer-focused initiative,” prompting Dell to fold them into other units of the company.

According to Cnet, Dell plans to sell through its Adamo inventory before officially pulling the plug. The laptop, however, is no longer included on the Dell website, though it’s being sold at Amazon.com for as much as $1,700 (£1,058).