It’s surprising that Dell has not entered into the tablet business, but that will change this year.

Reuters spoke to Dell’s CCO, Steve Felice, at CES about the company’s entry into the tablet business. He spoke on Dell’s attitude towards the tablet business and why they didn’t jump into it when all of their competitors did.

It’s strange that Dell would not want to jump right into the tablet business when everybody else did. It has proven to be a growing market even though Apple’s iPad has proven to be a superior device to Android tablets currently out on the market. Speaking to Reuters, Felice had this to say on their late entry:

“We have been taking our time. The general failure of everyone that’s tried to introduce a tablet outside of Apple” suggested Dell made a prudent choice, Felice said in an interview. “You will see us enter this market in a bigger way toward the end of the year. So we are not really deemphasizing it, we are really being very careful how we enter it.

Dell is looking at the overall environment of tablets and smartphones as they see them in a very different light from their PC business. Felice said that the focus is on hardware with PCs while the it’s the ecosystem that’s important to consumers when it comes to these mobile devices.

When Dell launches their tablet later this year, there will be two major operating systems to use: Windows 8 and Android. Both are viable options to Dell, but Felice did tell Reuters that he liked “the feel of Microsoft’s touch-enabled operating system.”

In the end though, it all comes down to the choice of the consumer. Knowing Dell, they will probably offer tablets with both operating systems.

When it comes to Apple, Dell thinks they have a decided advantage. Felice told Reuters that their tablets are going to be “very compatible with the business marketplace” which he thinks Apple has not really addressed.

“There’s lot of use in the commercial sector that requires security and more compatibility, and I think we will be able to address that in a better way,” Felice said.