Dell said carriers China Mobile and Claro in Brazil will start selling the Dell Mini 3 smartphone before the end of the year. The Mini 3 and handsets like it will put pricing pressure on the smartphone segment, a factor likely to most impact the Apple iPhone.

The news marks another milestone in a converging market where PC and cellphone makers are experimenting with each other's architectures to attack each other's markets. For example, earlier this year cellphone giant Nokia rolled out x86-based netbooks and struck a partnership with Intel to design handsets using Intel's its next-generation Atom processors.

Dell's Mini 3 marks the first big move outside the Windows/x86 world for the PC maker. In a recent Silicon Valley visit chief executive Michael Dell said the company will move gradually into new kinds of mobile systems with the Android phone representing the first of many devices to come.

Previously, Dell showed an ARM processor running a simplified software environment in one of its Windows/x86 notebooks.

The Mini 3 uses a version of China Mobile's OPhone platform, its variant of Android. The handset has a 3.5-inch touch-screen display, and will initially be sold in China without support for Wi-Fi, according to reports from the Associated Press and others. Dell did not provide any other technical details of the handset or its plans to sell it in other markets.

The lack of technical detail suggests the initial Dell handset may not sport much differentiation in its internal design from existing Android handsets from HTC, Motorola and Samsung. Dell may be seeking to leverage its brand and supply chain to deliver a low cost point, although it also did not comment on the handset's price.

Dell has been courting carriers, particularly in high growth emerging markets for some time. Earlier this year Dell embedded support for China Mobile's 3G network for in Dell netbooks sold in retail outlets in China. China Mobile has more than 500 million customers, and Claro serves more than 42 million subscribers.

Dell said it also has agreements with other telecom providers including Vodafone in Europe and Australia, AT&T and Verizon in the U.S., M1 and Starhub in Singapore and Maxis in Malaysia. "We are developing smaller and smarter mobile products that enable our customers to take their internet experience out of the home," said Ron Garriques, president of Dell's consumer group, speaking in a prepared statement.

In the netbook sector, the recently launched Windows 7 will help Microsoft and Intel architectures maintain a strong hold, said a technology executive from Lenovo in a recent interview. Nevertheless, Lenovo will debut at CES in January a netbook using the Qualcomm SnapDragon, the chip maker said.