Dell's 7-inch and 10-inch Streak tablets leaked!
We'd heard through the grapevine that the engineers at Round Rock were working on a number of slates to fill the Streak lineup, but man, we didn't see this coming... at least not yet. A couple of images along with an internal Dell announcement landed …
Context & Ripple Effects
Dell's slate push has been building since January, when it used its CES keynote to confirm an Android-powered tablet device (the 5-inch Mini 5 tease), and a later showing by Michael Dell only hinted — without confirming — a US arrival. The leak of images plus what Engadget describes as an internal announcement extends that single teased device into a family: 7-inch and 10-inch Streak siblings, though the details remain unconfirmed.
The pickup looks narrow so far — no syndicated reprints or visible discussion are logged around the April 16 date — which makes this an early look at Dell's lineup strategy rather than a widely litigated story. For a company that told investors in March it was returning to its regular growth curve after the downturn, a broader Streak family reads as part of the rebuild beyond core PCs.
First-order effects
- Dell's slate story shifts from one confirmed 5-inch device to a reported three-size Streak lineup, forcing the company to either confirm specs on its own schedule or cede the narrative to leaked images and internal documents.
- Rival PC makers working on their own slates now face a benchmark: a competitor apparently spanning 5, 7, and 10 inches before most have shipped anything.
Second-order effects
- If the 7- and 10-inch models are real, Dell's retail and carrier conversations change shape — partners evaluating a single curiosity device must instead plan shelf space and positioning for a tiered slate family.
- Android's tablet credibility gets a test case: Dell betting multiple sizes on Google's OS puts pressure on the platform to prove itself outside phones at exactly the moment Apple owns the large-slate conversation.
Third-order effects
- The pattern here is incumbent PC vendors extending trusted consumer brands (Streak grew out of the Mini line) across new form factors rather than launching clean-sheet products — a playbook that will define how traditional manufacturers enter the post-PC market if it holds.
- Leaks of internal announcements becoming the primary disclosure channel suggests Dell's product cadence is outpacing its PR discipline, a structural tension every hardware maker entering a fast-moving category will have to manage.
The trend: As slates emerge as a distinct hardware category in 2010, PC incumbents like Dell are responding not with single experiments but with multi-size brand extensions built on Android.