Is Dell looking to kill PCs with “Project Ophelia”? Push to go private may be to refocus Dell's client strategy on PC-on-a-stick.

Dell's Project Ophelia: an Android-based thin client that you can put in your pocket for around $50, eventually.

Dell

Dell is reportedly investigating a move to take the company private in a leveraged buy-out to clear the decks for a radical repositioning of the company. And according to a report from Atlantic Media's Quartz, that includes relaunching Dell's desktop and mobile business around a brand-new product: a computing device the size of a thumb-drive that will sell for about $50.

Dell announced its pocket client PC, called "project Ophelia," on January 8, and demonstrated it at CES. Developed by Dell's Wyse unit, Ophelia uses a Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) to draw power to boot from an HDTV display, or it can be powered off a USB port. It has integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capability for connecting to a keyboard, a mouse, and the network, and it runs the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system with all of the functionality of a tablet. It can also be used to power virtual instances of other desktop operating systems on a remote server or in the cloud.

In other words, it's a fusion of Wyse's thin client technology modeled after the capabilities of a Google Chromebook—except it can be carried in a pocket. The main drawbacks are that few HDTVs currently support MHL—though such support can be found in a number of Dell flat-panel displays.

Dell has been moving gradually away from its consumer PC roots for the past five years. The company's desktop and mobile computer business has suffered in the global PC-buying slump of the last year. Its consumer segment has been losing money, while the enterprise business outside of PC sales accounts for a majority of Dell's revenue. But the stock market has been punishing Dell as it has tried to shift focus. The company has lost 43 percent of its market capitalization over that time, despite continuing to be profitable and having an estimated $14.2 billion in cash (though most of that is in Dell's businesses overseas).

It is unlikely that Dell will completely jettison its PC business overnight in favor of Ophelia, as Quartz's Christopher Mims suggests. But the device could be at the center of a change of Dell's consumer-facing business and maybe even a big part of its end-to-end enterprise business strategy.