McLEAN, Va. -- Some rumors are just too sticky to let go.

Michael Dell gave here today what may be the clearest indication yet that the computer company he founded 25 years ago is looking to stake a claim in the burgeoning smartphone market.

The comments came during a far-ranging interview by Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, here at a packed luncheon hosted by the Northern Virginia Technology Council.

Pointing to Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo's proclamation at January's Consumer Electronics Show that smartphones would supplant the PC as the primary computing platform, Shapiro asked Dell if there were any truth to the "rumors out there about a telephone in Dell's future." The PC giant's CEO paused a moment before answering.

"Well, if [Kallasvuo] says that the telephone is the future of computing, then, you know, we're in the computer business, so I guess we must be in the phone business," Dell said with a smile, drawing a hearty laugh from the crowd of about 700.

Dell, which has been struggling to reclaim its share of the PC market and recently undertook a massive internal reorganization, has already started shrinking its computing devices with the long-anticipated netbook it unveiled in September. But the company, like many PC makers, is struggling for a way to cope with flattening computer sales -- even as the smartphone arena continues seeing double-digit growth.

If the rumors are to be believed, the release of a Dell smartphone could come later this month at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona.

Dell's cagey answer on whether that would indeed be the case didn't satisfy Shapiro. He tried again, and Dell got serious. Talking of the convergence of the PC and smartphone markets, Dell said he expects the coming years to produce an emerging class of devices that fill in the screen-size gaps between notebooks and devices like Apple's iPhone, and his company will be right in the thick of it.

"I do think of it as more of a continuum where you'll see many different screen sizes," he said. "Over time I think you'll see the size range of computing devices that we play in grow -- to [include] smaller ones as well."

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