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The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years

September 15, 2013 11:01 am / 1 Comment on The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years

This is my brief answer (details for that will come after the Acer’s opinion) to:
Wintel destined to eventually fail, says Acer founder [DIGITIMES, Sept 10, 2013]

Commenting on recent events in the PC industry at a recent media conference, Acer founder Stan Shih said that the Wintel camp is destined to fail since the two giants have been keeping most of the profits to themselves, which is indirectly pushing many players to Google’s ecosystem.

Since Wintel’s business strategies can no longer create profits for partners, many downstream IT players have turned to other ecosystems to seek profitability, noted Shih, adding that Google’s open platform strategy is not the main attraction prompting IT players to join the Google camp.

Linux is also an open platform, but this has not helped it receive similar attention, Shih noted. For an ecosystem to have a chance of growing and staying strong, it must have leadership adopting strategies that allow all partners to earn profits.

Shih pointed out that Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia will be the right decision if the cooperation creates value for the companies, shareholders, consumers and partners.

In the past, Taiwan-based enterprises have not placed much focus on the software and service industries, ignoring the importance of strengthening design capabilities and related intangible outputs.

Shih believes Taiwan will need to put more investment into design innovation (arts, software and technologies), in order to change the current status.

As for recent rumors that Acer may be acquired by another player, Shih declined to comment and said that he is in no position to talk about the situation. However, not long ago, when asked the same question, Shih said he is neutral about the idea as long as the plan is fully thought out, is good for both enterprises, and is able to create value and help the company advance further.

As with The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 14, 2013] there is at least a renewed hope that the Wintel phenomenon would be able to continue its industry level influence for the next two years at least. Note that Acer founder was definitely well aware of the Bay Trail-T situation when he did his remark about Wintel’s Future as already doomed.

People heavily engaged in the Wintel camp with their livelihood became so excited with that post of mine about Bay Trail that started to debate the question “for what the heck Windows on ARM is needed anymore?”

Reading through their exchange of views (in Hungarian) I had to put the following comment (given in English but also showing the original in Hungarian) to their debate:

Your question of “for what the heck Windows on ARM is needed anymore?” could be raised only from a software developer point of view. From point of view of hardware, which is the primary view in this regard, such a question is meaningless.

Intel just only catched up with the lag it had in the area of true mobile SoCs, and only in the space of so called application processors. Even more, marketwise it could only start from now to prove its ability to sell the Bay Trail-T SoCs (having finally leading parameters) in hundreds of millions annually. This proof could take as much as 2 years, since only the Windows 8.1 market has been secured for Intel so far, and with that the company would hardly be able to achieve such a high annual volume in only 2 years.

Meantime the ARM leading edge will move further ahead. Intel already has big.LITTLE around its neck with which even smaller vendors, like the 500 people strong Allwinner, could just within half a year leapfrog over Bay Trail-T. Moreover, the leadership implementation of the 64-bit ARM client SoCs, coming to market in 2014, will also rely on big.LITTLE.

Even more essential, however, that during these next 2 years Intel will compete with an incredibly innovative, and from the “go to market” point of view much more efficient, what I will call, OPEN SILICON IP (Intellectual Property) ecosystem, versus its own, now completely closed (even in GPU as well) IP system.

Personally I would regard as an outstanding achievement if during these 2 years Intel would not lag significantly from the leading of of ARM. Such a conclusion is based on the exploration of the OPEN SILICON IP ecosystem exactly one year ago (which was published just upon the completion of a supplementary investigation last December, all in such past tense):
The future of the semiconductor IP ecosystem [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 13, 2012].

That post, however, is by an order of magnitude more complex reading than the current Bay Trail-T analytical summary.

Velvárt András Re: “mi a fenének vannak ARM-os Windows-ok?”

Szoftveres szemmel merül csak fel a kédés. Hardveres szemüveggel, ami egyébként elsődleges ebben a tekintetben, ilyen kérdés egyszerűen értelmetlen.

Az Intel ugyanis csak éppen, hogy behozta az igazi mobil SoC-ok terén fennálló lemaradását, és kizárólag az ún. application processor SoC-ok terén. Ráadásul piacilag még csak mostantól tudja bebizonyítani, hogy élvonalbeli paraméterű Bay Trail-T SoC-ivel képes lesz-e majd százmilliós nagyságrendű éves eladásokat produkálni. Ez akár 2 év, hiszen jelenleg csak a Windows 8.1 a biztos piaca, és ezzel aligha lesz képes ekkora nagyságrendet produkálni.

Eközben az ARM élvonal tovább úszik. Máris az Intel nyakán van a big.LITTLE, amivel még olyan kisebb vendor-ok, mint az 500 fős létszámmal működő Allwinner, is fél éven belül túl tudnak lépni a Bay Trail-T-n. Ráadásul a big.LITTLE-en alapszik a 2014-ben piacra kerülő 64-bit-es ARM kliens SoC-ék csúcsteljesítményű megvalósítása is.

A leglényegesebb azonban, hogy az Intel ezalatt a 2 év alatt egy hihetetlenül innovatív és a piacra vitel szempontjából nála jóval hatékonyabb, úgy nevesíteném, hogy OPEN SILICON IP (Intellectual Property) ökoszisztémával versenyez, szembe az ő teljesen zárt IP rendszerével (ami most már GPU-ban is ilyen).

Magam részéről kimagasló eredménynek tartanám, ha ezalatt a 2 év alatt nem túlzottan maradna el az ARM élvonaltól. Ezen véleményemet az OPEN SILICON IP ökoszisztéma éppen egy évvel ezelőtti feltárása (ami a december végi kiegészítő feltáráskor lett csak közzétéve) alapozta meg (így, múltidőben):

The future of the semiconductor IP ecosystem:

https://lazure2.wordpress.com/…/

Ez persze még a mostani Bay Trail-T elemző összegzésnél is, mondjuk egy nagyságrenddel összetettebb olvasmány.

I will add to that here even more (in order to have all other aspects constituting additional challenges to Wintel in the next 2 years or so):

During these 2 years we will witness an upcoming, new market disruption, which is also all Android based (more precisely forked Android based):

Xiaomi announcements: from Mi3 to Xiaomi TV [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 5, 2013] combined with earlier Eight-core MT6592 for superphones and big.LITTLE MT8135 for tablets implemented in 28nm HKMG are coming from MediaTek to further disrupt the operations of Qualcomm and Samsung [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 20-29, 2013]

An ARM-focussed Microsoft spin-off could be the only solution to save Microsoft in the crucial next 3-years period [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 24, 2013]
How the device play will unfold in the new Microsoft organization? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 14, 2013] combined with later Microsoft answers to the questions about Nokia devices and services acquisition: tablets, Windows downscaling, reorg effects, Windows Phone OEMs, cost rationalization, ‘One Microsoft’ empowerment, and supporting developers for an aggressive growth in market share [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 4, 2013] and Unique Nokia assets (from factories to global device distribution & sales, and the Asha sub $100 smartphone platform etc.) will now empower the One Microsoft devices and services strategy [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 3, 2013] posts, as well as with Nokia Lumia 1020: an excellent case of Nokia’s contribution to Microsoft as a key innovation partner [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 12, 2013] and Minutes of a high-octane but also expert evangelist CEO: Stephen Elop, Nokia [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 13, 2013].
Companion Device Computing as envisaged and implemented by Pranav Mistry and his TTT team from Samsung: the case of Galaxy Gear + Galaxy Note 3 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013] combined with The new Air Command S Pen User Experience making the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phablet, and Galaxy Note 10.1, 2014 Edition tablet next-generation devices [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013], Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing and GPU Compute is the hidden gem in the Galaxy Note 3 and GALAXY Note 10.1, 2014 Edition, launched at ‘Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2’ event [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013] and 20 years of Samsung “New Management” as manifested by the latest, June 20th GALAXY & ATIV innovations [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 2, 2013] posts, which are also all Android based (more precisely forked Android based).
Windows 8.1: Mind boggling opportunities, finally some appreciation by the media [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 27, 2013] combined with earlier Microsoft betting on boosting Windows RT demand with top level ARM SoCs from its SoC partners, Windows 8.1 enhancements, Outlook addition to the Office 2013 RT and very deep tactical discounts to its OEM partners for tablet offerings of more value and capability [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 6, 2013] post.
ARM Cortex-A12 CPU cores and Mali-T622 GPU cores with Process Optimization Packs (POPs), plus Mali-V500 video block for mid-range mobile devices of the end of 2014 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 3, 2013] combined with the later H2CY13: Upcoming next-gen Nexus 7, the ASUS MeMO Pad HD 7 “re-incarnation” at reduced by $50 price, dual/quad-core mid-range tablets from white-box vendors starting from $65 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 5, 2013] post.
Superphones turning point: segment satured with Tier 1 globals while the Chinese locals are at less than 40% of the Samsung price [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 3, 2013] combined with earlier Xiaomi, OPPO and Meizu–top Chinese brands of smartphone innovation [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 1, 2013], GiONEE (金立), the emerging global competitor on the smartphone market [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 22, 2013] and Spreadtrum is to be acquired by a Chinese high-tech investment enterprise owned by the state and also belonging to the leading Tsinghua University with microelectronics research interests [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 26, 2013] posts, as well as Android to overtake the overall PC market? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 20, 2013] a close follow-up to those posts (but not only those).

The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs?

September 14, 2013 2:06 pm / 2 Comments on The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs?

“Bay Trail” was, and still is a highly secretive project inside Intel as you could see from this latest video Update: New Atom Chip, Bay Trail: Great User Experience and Battery Life [channelintel YouTube channel, Sept 26, 2013]

An Intel engineer, speaking in anonymity, worked on the team that created new multicore system-on-a-chip processors, formerly codenamed “Bay Trail,” for tablets, 2 in 1 devices, all-in-ones, laptops and desktops. The processors are essentially, the “brain” for many of the most popular mobile devices. He describes using tablets running on the new Bay Trail processor as “amazing.” “The fluidity involved with total user experience is great,” he says. “The Bay Trail-based systems also have instant connections. Your data is never stale. And, the battery life improvements are huge.”

Coming back to the title of the post: could be very much so. Look at the first tablet:
ASUS Transformer Book T100 [the Official ASUS Facebook page, Sept 11, 2013]

The announcements just keep coming! Introducing the ASUS Transformer Book T100, the 2-in-1 Ultraportable laptop with a 10″ tablet powered by Intel’s latest Bay Trail-T quad-core [Atom] processor. Available in the US starting October 18th from only $349.

ASUS Transformer Book T100 Press Event [ASUS North America YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

On September 11, 2013 Jonney Shih, the Chairman of Asus introduced the ASUS Transformer Book T100 to the world with a perfect fit to their long articulated slogan: “We Transform”.

From ASUS Transforms Expectations for Mobile Computing with New Transformer Books at IDF 2013 [press release, Sept 12, 2013]:

“The ASUS Transformer Book T100 is the perfect transformation of the Eee PC with full compatibility, detachable touch screen, immersive entertainment and enough battery for all-day computing,” said ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih. “It is truly a game-changer for our mobile lifestyle.”

Transformer Book T100— high-mobility notebook and tablet combined

ASUS Transformer Book T100 is a 10.1-inch ultraportable with an Intel® Atom™ ‘Bay Trail’ quad-core processor and detachable HD display than can be used as a standalone Windows 8.1 tablet. Featuring a sleek design and durable finish, Transformer Book T100 is not only one of the lightest ultraportables currently available at just 1.07kg, but also one of the lightest 10-inch tablets around, at 550g.

Transformer Book T100 features the new Intel® Atom™ Bay Trail-T Z3740 [2M Cache, 1.33 GHz, up to 1.86 GHz] quad-core processor for smooth multi-tasking performance and incredible energy efficiency that can last up to 11 hours on battery power. The lightweight keyboard dock features precision-engineered keys designed for comfortable extended use, a multi-touch touchpad with full Windows 8.1 gesture support and USB 3.0. Just 10.5mm thin, Transformer Book T100 features a brilliant HD 10.1-inch tablet IPS multi-touch display with wide 178-degree viewing angles and razor-sharp images. Transformer Book T100 is also pre-installed with Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013 with full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, the perfect productivity solution for both school and work.

In retrospective:
ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 17, 2012]

ASUS Transformer Book T100 – Intel Bay Trail Quad-Core Tablet / Notebook 2-in-1 Hands On Preview [TechnologyGuide YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

We take a hands-on look at the new ASUS Transformer Book T100 Hybrid 2-in-1 Laptop/Tablet PC, running Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 operating system. Specifications: -1.33 GHz Quad-Core Intel Bay Trail Processor -2GB RAM -32GB / 64GB SSD -USB 3.0 -11-hour Battery life

From Intel we learned the same day that smaller 8” or even 7” tablets without detachable keyboards will come for as low as $199. There will be certainly higher priced versions as well, with higher resolution than that of the T100’s 1366×768 (which has an IPS screen nevertheless), 11” screen instead of the 10” T100, and most importantly using the higher-end Z3770 SoC with up to 2.4 GHz in burst mode (when thermal and other conditions allow it) instead of T100’s Z3740 SoC with up to 1.8 GHz only. In fact there will be notebook and desktop SoC products as well, code named Bay-Trail-M and Bay-Trail-D, respectively.

#5 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

#47 slide of the same SPCS004 presentation as above

This is pretty good as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and NVIDIA Tegra 4 are the current leaders among quad-core ARM SoCs. And a very important point here is that Intel went down very significantly with the recommended customer price of just $37 in volume (1K TRAY) for Z3770. Its “little brother” the Z3740 has even lower $32 price in volume (1K TRAY) while the same clock frequency Clover Trail Z2760 launched a year ago had $41 price (1K TRAY) but significantly less performance as you will see below. And remember that the non-tablet but netbook Atoms, the N470 and N475, launched 2 and a half year ago had even $75 (1K TRAY) price, and were inferior in all regards even to the Z2760. Intel has definitely decided to compete with ARM quadcores not only in performance but in price as well.

UPDATE as of Sept 20, 2013: By the time of publishing my analysis of The manufacturing side of the “Race to the Bottom” Ecosystem [‘USD 99 Allwinner’, Sept 19, 2013] the pricing information for the announced Bay Trail-T SoCs as well as the earlier generation Clover Trail (Z3770, Z3740 and Z2760) disappeared from subsequent ark.intel.com specification pages. I cannot think any other reason than the indicative pricing information became a public blunder for Intel when people were asking questions similar to the two opening ones in my above indicated post:

Are you aware of $32 entry-level Android tablets available for local resellers around the world? Are you aware that this is the price of Intel’s upcoming in October 2013 Bay Trail-T Z3740 SoC, i.e. a chip only?

Update as of Oct 14, 2013:
Intel plans cheap Bay Trail CPUs for 2Q14 [DIGITIMES, Oct 14, 2013]

Intel is planning to release entry-level Bay Trail-based processors for the Android platform in the second quarter of 2014, according to sources from tablet players.

The sources expect the CPUs to be priced between US$15-20, about US$12 lower than the current models.

Although Intel has already offered subsidies for its Bay Trail-T processors including Atom Z3740 and Z3770 at US$32 and US$37 and another 10% off for bulk purchase, they are still less competitive in pricing compared to ARM-based quad-core processors.

With the new entry-level processors, the sources expect Intel to gain an equal footing against players such as Mediatek, Qualcomm and Nvidia.

Let’s see then the great video decoding capability of Z3770:
Bay Trail playing 4K video 100Mb/s on a 2560×1440 sreen [of Intel Z3770 based Reference Design] [Francois Piednoel YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013]

then a recent game with 3D graphics: Torchlight II on Intel’s Bay Trail Tablet at IDF13 [HardwareZoneMY YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013]

An Intel representative demonstrating Torchlight II on a reference design Bay Trail unit.

No wonder as relative to the previous generation Clover Trail Atom Z2760 introduced last September, which had the Imagination PowerVR SGX545 GPU @533 MHz, the Bay Trail Atom Z3770 has the Intel HD Graphics (Gen 7 with 4EU) @313 MHz. Measured at the same 13×7 resolution the improvement is not less than 6.42 times according to benchmarking run by Intel. It is also significantly better than the contemporary (Sept’12) leaders of quad-core ARM SoCs from NVIDIA and Qualcomm, by 4.4 and 3 times, respectively:

#52 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

This comparison is speaking for itself:
Intel Bay Trail demo (tablet on the right) vs. Clover Trail (tablet on the left) [zzopmusic YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013] i.e. the previous generation Atom

Note that relative to the current quadcore SoC leaders from ARM the GPU performance of Bay Trail Z3770 is still lagging somewhat:

#49 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

It is important here to compare the Bay Trail Z3770 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 only because only they are at the same 19×10 resolution while NVIDIA Tegra 4 is at the much higher 25×16 resolution.

This current lag in GPU performance may be overcome in the future as the Bay Trail-T GPU had been announced by much higher clock frequency possibilities, as given on #15 slide of the above presentation:

Intel HD Graphics architecture
– Graphics turbo supported with CPU-GPU power sharing
– DirextX 11, OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics core
– Support for high-resolution displays (up to 25×16)
– Programmable in-order multi-threaded
– 4EUs, 8 threads each, SIMD32
– >= 667MHz

High-quality, high-performance, low power HD H.264 encoder
– High profile support, fast transcode
– Separate 3D and media power wells
– Video and display post-processing support

Power
– Autonomously hardware detects Idle condition, save state and power gate
– Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling

No wonder why at IDF 2013: Intel demos Bay Trail tablet with virtual shopping app [Computerworld YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

On Wednesday at IDF in San Francisco Intel launched Bay Trail, the next-generation Atom Z3000 chip that gives tablets PC-like performance.

That was meant to be the supposedly most convincing demo at the full IDF 2013 San Francisco Dr. Hermann Eul Keynote [karan YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

Dr. Hermann Eul, Vice President & General Manager, Mobile and Communications Group

Also read the relevant part of the from IDF Day 2 Keynote Transcript, from which I will quote here just the following:

[4:14] The platform from soups to nuts. What does that mean? First, we start with a fantastic CPU, then we add the gorgeous imaging processing, and we have a stunning graphics coming to this. And around this, of course we will always be connected. We want to have fast, robust, reliable connectivity, cellular connectivity, short range connectivity. We put this on this platform as well, and then we add much more stuff: I/Os, audio, display, and so on and so forth.

Last but not least, we dovetail very sophisticated security into this and a highly specialized, optimized power management. That is the crown jewel of the platform. On this, we put software, a protocol stack, hardened in more than 100 countries and operators around the globe, a very proven stack around all the connectivity connections, and of course a highly optimized software operating system load that runs best on our architecture. And this we call the platform, from A to Z. All these elements are important. They form this platform.

For the user-facing part, the application system, it all starts with a great CPU. A leadership CPU is necessary to do this. And we all know, all cores are not created equal. That compares very much to our brains. So to speak, the analogy is that the core is the brain of that system. And so, our brains are all not equal.

And for our platform, it just starts with an extraordinary brain. The Silvermont core. It’s a flexible, multi-core architecture, has 64 bits, it is leading in performance per watt efficiency. And the good thing is, it spans an ultra-wide dynamic range from very low power to extremely high performance that we need. And we are supporting with this the broadest range of devices and market segments. And needless to say, it comes with the advanced 22-nanometer tri-gate transistor technology.

#9 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

And having said this, we have the capabilities, and we know the secret sauce on matchmaking: this stunning architecture and this very advanced process technology manufacturing. That is what I call in that slide here magic. This is our secret sauce. And this is what, exactly what we have done.

And all that leads me to today’s announcement, the introduction of the Bay Trail platform.

Bay Trail is architected for the best mobile computing experience. In more detail, it has leading performance and outstanding battery life. It comes with the next generation of Intel multi-core technology. It provides immersive experiences with Intel HD graphics, and it has ample performance on demand, with the Intel Burst technology 2.0. And of course, it comes with advanced imaging capabilities, and with our next-gen programmable ISP. [8:54]

Intel Bay Trail the Newest Intel Atom Processor, Tech News Interview [Santa Barbara Arts TV YouTube Partner Global News YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

Intel Executives and Developers talk about Bay Trail, the Newest Intel Atom Processor 22 nanometer, quad-core system-on-a-chip technology Intel Bay Trail the Newest Intel Atom Processor Tech News Interviews.

Dr. Hermann Eul, Vice President & General Manager for Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group: [1:33] “If you look at the Windows tablets I think it is amazing to see what you can do on these lightweight tablets. What you did years back with a heavy weight computer everything now works on those tablets: from office applications, from productivity work to what’s gaming, everything runs on it. They are just compatible PERIOD.” [1:57] – says

“Bay Trail is an amazing platform we’ve developed for tablets,” says Ticky Thakkar, Chief Platform Architect for Intel’s Mobile and Communication’s Group. [2:46] “Well, Bay Trail will give you the same performance as the previous generation of our core at about 5x less power. So that gives you some perspective of how much hard work we did on power.” [3:03] “You’re going to get awesome performance delivered in the thinnest, lightest tablet.” Thakkar led the development of the latest Atom processor, which is based on 22 nanometer, quad-core system-on-a-chip technology. Essentially, the technological achievement has resulted in a chip that outperforms laptops of just a few years ago.

Tami Reller from Microsoft talks Windows 8.1 at IDF 2013 Keynote [camwilmot YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

Microsoft’s Tami Reller took the stage at this year’s IDF to talk about Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8.1 update. The Redmond giant recently released the update to manufacturer and posted it on MSDN for download, which Reller suggested was well received.

Intel Launches New Multicore, Low-Power SoCs for Tablets, 2 in 1s and Other Computing Devices [press release, Sept 11, 2013]

Scalable 22nm Silvermont Microarchitecture Delivers Flexibility for a Range of Designs, Price Points

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

Built on its leading 22nm tri-gate technology and the new “Silvermont” microarchitecture, Intel launched three new multicore SoCs, formerly codenamed “Bay Trail,” for tablets, 2 in 1 devices, all-in-ones, laptops and desktops.
The multi-core Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Series, Intel’s most powerful SoC for tablets to-date, delivers an ideal balance of performance, battery life, graphics and features for consumers and businesses, on both Android* and full Windows 8* operating systems.
Leading OEMs will offer a wide range of Bay Trail-powered devices at a variety of prices starting in the fourth quarter of 2013.

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Sept. 11, 2013 –Intel Corporation today launched its latest family of low-power systems-on-a-chip (SoC), codenamed “Bay Trail,” that will fuel a wave of highly powerful and energy efficient tablets, 2 in 1s and other mobile devices to market for consumers and business users in the fourth quarter of this year from leading OEMs including AAVA*, Acer*, ASUS*, Dell*, Lenovo* and Toshiba*.

The “Bay Trail” family of processors is based on Intel’s low-power, high-performance microarchitecture “Silvermont,” announced in May 2013. The Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series (“Bay Trail-T“) is the company’s first mobile multi-core SoC and its most powerful offering¹ to date for tablets and other sleek mobile designs. It delivers a fast and fluid experience and a powerful balance of performance, battery life, graphics and rich features.

The flexibility of the new microarchitecture allows for variants of the SoC to serve multiple market segments, including new Intel® Pentium® and Celeron® processors (“Bay Trail”-M and -D) for entry 2 in 1s, laptops, desktops and all-in-one systems.

The family of “Bay Trail” SoCs provides a wide range of options for Intel’s customers by enabling one hardware configuration that supports both Windows 8* and Android*, ultimately offering people broader choice of form factors at a range of price points that meet the varied needs of consumers and business users.

“What we have delivered with our Bay Trail platform is an incredibly powerful SoC that delivers outstanding performance, long battery life, and a great experience for the way people use these devices today. It’s an incredible leap forward,” said Hermann Eul, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group. “With Bay Trail as the foundation, our OEM partners are bringing a wide variety of designs at a range of prices to delight consumers, business users and IT managers.”

To bring this level of performance to a processor aimed at mobile devices, Intel developed a new platform that solves the contemporary technology challenges people have today, including the ability to multitask, the need for prolonged battery life and enhanced graphics, and the ability to have a more productive, enjoyable mobile experience. Video content and B-roll featuring Intel executives and developers on the making of Bay Trail and supporting images are available at intel.synapticdigital.com.

More Powerful Tablets, 2 in 1s with Intel Atom Z3000 Processor Series

The Intel Atom Z3000 Processor series delivers leading performance with all-day battery life. It is Intel’s most capable, best-performing platform to-date for tablets and other sleek mobile devices. It offers a smaller footprint and lower power usage while also enabling double the compute performance and triple the graphics performance compared to the previous-generation Intel Atom processor. The low-power SoC platform enables over 10 hours of active battery life² and three weeks of standby with an always-connected mobile experience.

The Intel Atom Z3000 Processor series also includes Intel® Burst Technology 2.0 with four cores, four threads and 2MB L2 cache. This performance allows users to multi-task, consume and create content, and enjoy a rich experience across either Android or Windows 8. People will also have a choice of form factors between tablets and 2 in 1s, with thin-and-light devices ranging from 8mm to 1 pound, and screen sizes ranging from 7-11.6 inches.* Tablets based on this latest Intel Atom SoC will be available at prices starting as low as $199.

The Intel Atom Z3000 series also enables business-ready tablets that deliver the experiences and designs people want with the protection for the enterprise that IT requires. With robust security features, including McAfee® DeepSAFE* Technology, AES hardware full disk encryption, Intel® Platform Trust Technology, Intel® Identity Protection Technology and Intel Data Protection Technology, the platform offers a more secure computing environment. It also supports Microsoft Windows 8 Pro Domain Join and Group Policy, and delivers full application and peripheral compatibility.

Intel has been working with top application developers to ensure the best experience is available for Intel® architecture platforms on both Windows and Android. Work with Cyberlink, Skype-HD and Netflix-HD, PhiSix, Arcsoft, Tieto, Gameloft, and many line of business apps are a few examples where Intel has focused on optimizing imaging, graphics, and overall performance that will ultimately improve the experience for consumers. Intel has a long history of optimizations for Windows and Andorid operating systems.

Intel will introduce 64-bit support for tablets in early 2014, delivering even greater value to IT managers. Devices built on this version of the SoC will offer enterprise-class applications and security, and with Intel® Identity Protection Technology (IPT) with PKI, will not require a VPN password when used with systems optimized for IPT and PKI.

Bay Trail Processors to Power Entry 2 in 1s, Notebooks, Desktops and All-in-Ones

The “Bay Trail M” line will be available in four SKUs: Intel Pentium N3510 and Intel Celeron N2910, N2810 and N2805 processors. This series will power a number of innovative 2 in 1 devices in addition to notebooks enabled with touch capabilities, bringing them to new audiences at lower price points.

With the microarchitecture flexibility and graphics improvements across all of the “Bay Trail” SKUs, the Pentium N3000 Processor and Celeron N2000 Processor series also boast two times faster performance in productivity applications and up to three times improvement in graphics compared to 2-year-old Intel-based value notebooks³. Designs powered by these processors can be fanless, can measure less than 11 mm thick and weigh just 2.2 lbs. Intel expects the systems to start at $199 for a clamshell device, $250 for a notebook with touch and $349 for a 2 in 1 device.

The “Bay Trail D” line will be available in three SKUs: Intel Pentium J2850, Intel Celeron J1850 and Intel Celeron J1750. These offerings are Intel’s smallest-ever packages for desktop processors, making them ideal for fanless and smaller form factor systems for entry level desktop computing. The processors are also ideal for vertical uses, including intelligent digital displays, with the power savings and up to three times faster performance than similar products from Intel just three years ago³. Full systems based on these SKUs are expected to start at $199.

Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series (“Bay Trail-T“) … its most powerful offering¹ to date for tablets and other sleek mobile designs
1 Based on the geometric mean of a variety of power and performance measurements across various benchmarks. Benchmarks included in this geomean are measurements on browsing benchmarks and workloads including SunSpider* and page load tests on Internet Explorer*, FireFox*, & Chrome*; Dhrystone*; EEMBC* workloads including CoreMark*; Android* workloads including CaffineMark*, AnTutu*, Linpack* and Quadrant* as well as measured estimates on SPECint* rate_base2000 & SPECfp* rate_base2000; on Silvermont preproduction systems compared to Atom processor Z2580. Individual results will vary. SPEC* CPU2000* is a retired benchmark. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go to: www.intel.com/performance

Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series (“Bay Trail-T“) … over 10 hours of active battery life²2 Battery life is measured 1080p,10″, 31Whr 13×7 OEM System; FFRD on 38.5 Whr 25×14, 10Mbps h.264 Elephants Dream video. Windows 8 only.

The “Bay Trail M” line … two times faster performance in productivity applications and up to three times improvement in graphics compared to 2-year-old Intel-based value notebooks³

The “Bay Trail D” line … up to three times faster performance than similar products from Intel just three years ago³3 Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go to www.intel.com/performance

Intel Baytrail SOC Explained [minipcpro YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013]

More information: Intel’s Bay Trail Fact Sheet (PDF) [Intel, Sept 11, 2013]
as well as from: http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/55844/Bay-Trail
……………………….………………….. Z3740 ……… Z3770 ……. Z3770D ….. Z3740D

UPDATE as of Sept 20, 2013: By the time of publishing my analysis of The manufacturing side of the “Race to the Bottom” Ecosystem [‘USD 99 Allwinner’, Sept 19, 2013] the pricing information for the announced Bay Trail-T SoCs as well as the earlier generation Clover Trail (Z3770, Z3740 and Z2760) disappeared from subsequent ark.intel.com specification pages. I cannot think any other reason than the indicative pricing information became a public blunder for Intel when people were asking questions similar to the two opening ones in my above indicated post:

Are you aware of $32 entry-level Android tablets available for local resellers around the world? Are you aware that this is the price of Intel’s upcoming in October 2013 Bay Trail-T Z3740 SoC, i.e. a chip only?

The complete set of Z3000 Series SKUs from here (with all other Bay Trail SKUs as well):

According to #5 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture, Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation the 2-core Z3600 Series (Z3680, Z3680D) is targeting only the Android tablets:

4th Generation Intel® Atom™ Processor-Based Tablet Overview [Intel Developer Zone article, Sept 11, 2013]

Introducing the next generation Intel® Atom™ Processor
(Code named “Bay Trail”)

Abstract

Intel has launched its latest Intel® Atom™ processor, code named “Bay Trail”. It is the first Intel Atom processor based on 22-nm technology. This article discusses the key features of the platform like extended battery life, Intel® Gen7 graphics architecture, advanced imaging and video, improved performance, security, and more.

Platform Overview

The new processor offers Intel level performance for apps, games, photos, videos, and web browsing in the new thinnest/lightest/coolest form factors. The Intel Atom processor is optimized for tablets and 2 in 1 devices. Tablets based on the new Intel Atom processor support multiple cameras with excellent camera quality and feature integrated image signal processing for both still and video image capture. The table below shows the “Bay Trail” improvements.

Comparison of Clover Trail vs Bay Trail features

Intel Atom processor feature highlights

First-ever 22-nm Intel Atom processor

The new first-ever, 22-nm Intel Atom processor is a quad-core system on chip (SOC) with 4 cores/4 threads. With the CPU, graphics, and memory in one package, this modular design provides the flexibility to package a high-performance processor and graphics solution for multiple form factors.

Enhanced battery life

The new processor offers active battery life of more than 10 hours and standby performance of approximately 30 days³.

Graphics and Media Performance

The latest Intel Atom processor includes a 7th generation Intel® GPU with burst technology to provide a stunning graphics and media experience. The new processor supports high resolution displays up to 2560X1600 @ 60HZ and supports Intel® Wireless (Intel® WiDi) technology through Miracast. Seamless video playback is supported by a high performance and low power hardware acceleration of media encode and decode. The table below compares the two processors’ graphics features.

Intel Burst Technology 2.0

Automatically allows processor cores to run faster than the base operating frequency if they’re operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits.

Graphics Feature Comparison

Advanced Imaging and video

The new Intel Atom processor comes with an integrated image signal processor and supports excellent camera quality. It supports video capture at 1080p with full HD playback. Superior multi axis Document Image Solution (DIS) and image alignment extend High Dynamic Range (HDR) to moving devices hence removing the moving blur. Ghost removal is also extended from HDR to moving scenes.

Security Features

With people carrying their devices with them almost everywhere they go, they are more likely to lose their tablet or laptop. And even if they don’t lose them, devices are susceptible to the growing number of viruses and malware threats. Intel® Identity Protection Technology (Intel® IPT)⁴ can help businesses keep their critical information secure and protect against malware. Intel® IPT helps prevent unauthorized access to personal and business accounts by using hardware-based authentication.

New business-class tablets built with the Intel Atom processor Z3700 Series are specifically designed for the needs of business and the enterprise. Hardware-enhanced Intel® security technologies and support for software from McAfee offer robust security capabilities.

Intel® Wireless Display benefits on Intel Atom processor

Intel® WiDi enables content-protected HD streaming and interactive usages between tablets and TVs. It supports full 1080p video and low latency gaming, and is Miracast compliant Intel® WiDi can be used to link health indicators as well. A few of the capabilities of Miracast-enabled apps are:

– Share & Enjoy: use a big screen HDTV to enjoy and share media with family and friends
– Wireless: quickly and securely connect with standard Wi-Fi to a TV without cables
– Easy Set-up: simple user interface makes it easy to connect; no additional remote controls
– Portable: adapter is small and light, so solution can move with you

Resources for Developers

Below are links to some resources for programming on Windows 8 that can help you take advantage of the new Intel Atom processor features.

1: Optimize apps for touch: The latest devices with Intel Atom processors include touch screens. To learn more on how about UX/UI guidelines and how optimize app design for touch, see:
– Ultrabook™ Device and Tablet Windows* Touch Developer Guide
– Handling touch input in Windows* 8 Applications

2: Optimize apps with sensors: Intel Atom processor-based platforms come with several sensors: GPS, Compass, Gyroscope, Accelerometer, and Ambient Light. These sensor recommendations are aligned with the Microsoft standard for Windows 8. Use the Windows sensor APIs, and your code will run on all Ultrabook™ and tablet systems running Windows 8. For more information, see:
– Ultrabook™ and Tablet Windows* 8 Sensors Development Guide
– Detecting Ultrabook sensors on Windows 8

3: Optimize apps with Intel platform features: Take advantage of the security features such as Intel Anti-Theft Technology⁴ and Intel Identity Protection Technology with HD Graphics. Please refer to resources below for more information on each. For more information, see:
– Intel® Anti-Theft Technology
– Intel® Identity Protection Technology

4: Optimize for visible performance differentiation: Intel® Quick Sync Video encode and post-processing for media and visual intensive applications. For more information, see:
– Intel® Media SDK
– Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions
– Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer Manuals
– Graphics Developers Guide

5: Optimize app performance with Intel® tools: Check out the Intel® Composer XE 2013 and Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE 2013 for Windows. These suites provide compilers, Intel® Performance Primitives, and Intel® Threaded Building Blocks that help boost application performance. You can also optimize and future-proof media and graphics workloads on all IA platforms with the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers 2013 and Intel Media SDK. For more information, see:
– intel.com/software/products
– http://software.intel.com/en-us/windows-tool-suites/
– http://software.intel.com/en-us/vcsource/tools

¹ Claims for Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 (up to 2.40GHz, 4T4C Silvermont, 2MB L2 Cache) are based on an internal Intel® Reference design tablet which is not available for purchase: 10” screen with 25×14 resolution, Intel Gen 7 HD Graphics, pre-production graphics driver, 2GB (2x1GB) LPDDR3-1067, 64GB eMMC solid state storage, 38.5 Whr battery. Based on TouchXPRT, WebXPRT and SYSmark* 2012 Lite compared to Intel Atom Processor Z2760. Individual results will vary. Commercial systems may be available after future Windows updates. Consult your system manufacturer for more details. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go to http://www.intel.com/performance.

² Claims for Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 (up to 2.40GHz, 4T4C Silvermont, 2MB L2 Cache) are based on an internal Intel® Reference design tablet which is not available for purchase: 10” screen with 25×14 resolution, Intel Gen 7 HD Graphics, pre-production graphics driver, 2GB (2x1GB) LPDDR3-1067, 64GB eMMC solid state storage, 38.5 Whr battery. Measured using 3DMark* Ice Storm—a 3D graphics benchmark that measures 3D gaming performance compared to Intel Atom Processor Z2760. Find out more at http://www.futuremark.com. Individual results will vary. Commercial systems may be available after future Windows updates. Consult your system manufacturer for more details. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go tohttp://www.intel.com/performance.

³ Based on a 30W Hour battery on 19×10 resolution on 10.1” display. Higher resolution will require larger battery. Active use measured as 1080/30 fps local video playback. Battery life may differ based on SKU and SoC performance.

⁴ No computer system can provide absolute security. Requires an Intel® Identity Protection Technology-enabled system, including an enabled Intel® processor, enabled chipset, firmware, software, and Intel integrated graphics (in some cases) and participating website/service. Intel assumes no liability for lost or stolen data and/or systems or any resulting damages. For more information, visit http://ipt.intel.com/. Consult your system manufacturer and/or software vendor for more information.

Tablet Performance: Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 [Intel Infographic]

System Configurations – Performance

Latest Generation: Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 (4T4C, up to 2.4 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache) measured on Intel® Reference Design 1.4.1: Memory: 2 GB; OS: Microsoft* Windows* 8.1 RTM; Browser: Chrome* 29.0.1547.57; Graphics driver 10.18.10.3266; Display size: 10”; Display Resolution: 2560×1440; Battery size: 38.5 WHr; Storage: 64 GB
Prior generation / existing tablet: Intel® Atom™ Processor Z2760 (4T2C, up to 1.8 GHz, 1 MB L2 Cache) measured on Acer* Iconia* W510: Memory: 2 GB; OS Microsoft* Windows* 8; Browser: Chrome* 29.0.1547.57; Graphics driver: 9.14.3.1082; Display size: 10.1”; Display Resolution: 1366×768; Battery size: 26.6 WHr; Storage: 64 GB

System Configurations – Battery life

Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3770 (4T4C, up to 2.4 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache) measured on Intel® Reference Design 1.4.1: Memory: 2 GB; OS: Microsoft* Windows* 8.1 RTM; Browser: Chrome* 29.0.1547.57; Graphics driver 10.18.10.3266; Display size: 10”; Display Resolution: 2560×1440; Battery size: 38.5 WHr; Storage: 64 GB
Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3740 (4T4C, up to 1.86 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache) measured on OEM pre-production system: Memory: 2 GB; OS: Microsoft* Windows* 8.1 RTM; Browser: Chrome* 29.0.1547.57; Graphics driver 10.18.10.3266; Display size: 10”; Display Resolution: 1366×768; Battery size: 31 WHr; Storage: 64 GB

Product and Performance Information

1. Based on TouchXPRT, WebXPRT, and SYSmark* 2012 Lite compared to Intel® Atom™ processor Z2560. Individual results will vary.

2. Measured by TouchXPRT* 2013 overall score and Convert video for sharing sub score. TouchXPRT 2013 is a benchmark for evaluating the capabilities of your Windows* 8 and Windows RT devices. TouchXPRT 2013 runs tests based on five user scenarios (beautify photo album, prepare photos for sharing, convert videos for sharing, export podcast to MP3, and create slideshow from photos) and produces results for each of the five test scenarios plus an overall score. Find out more at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/benchmarkxprt/touchxprt/.

3. Measured by WebXPRT* 2013. WebXPRT 2013 uses scenarios created to mirror the tasks you do every day to compare the performance of almost any Web-enabled device. It contains four HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads: Photo Effects, Face Detect, Stocks Dashboard, and Offline Notes. Find out more at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/benchmarkxprt/webxprt/. File transfer workload measures time transferring a 423 MB playlist from a PC to a tablet.

4. Measured by SYSmark* 2012 Lite overall score and TabletMark. SYSmark 2012 Lite is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of office productivity, data/financial analysis, system management, and web development. SYSmark 2012 Lite features popular applications from each of their respective fields. Find out more at http://bapco.com/products/sysmark-2012-lite. TabletMark is targeted specifically for touch-enabled devices. With support for Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT, TabletMark measures performance for two different usage scenarios: Web & Email and Photo & Video sharing. Find out more at http://bapco.com/products/tabletmark.

5. Measured using 3DMark* Ice Storm, a 3-D graphics benchmark that measures 3-D gaming performance. Find out more at http://www.futuremark.com.

6. Display resolution is an OEM feature selection. Consult your system manufacturer for more details.

7. Battery life is measured using a 1080p 10Mbps h.264 Elephants Dream video. Configuration: In the device settings, disable all radios except Wi-Fi. Disable Intel® Display Power Saving Technology (Intel® DPST), set up the system to ~200 nits screen brightness using a full screen white background, and re-enable Intel DPST. Turn OFF the adaptive brightness setting under Power Options in Control Panel. Set “Dim the display” to never on both battery and AC. Set “Put the computer to sleep” to never on both battery and AC. Wait 15 minutes after boot. Launch the default Windows* 8.1 Style UI video player, start the workload video in a loop, and disconnect the AC plug to start the test. Measure the time until battery is exhausted.

8. Requires an Intel® Wireless Display-enabled system, compatible adapter, and TV with 1080p and Blu-ray* or other protected content playback, a compatible adapter and media player supporting Intel® WiDi software, and graphics driver installed. Consult your tablet manufacturer. For more information, see http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/intel-wireless-display.html. 

9. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations, and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information, go to http://www.intel.com/performance.

ASUS Transformer Book T100 [the Official ASUS Facebook page, Sept 11, 2013]

The announcements just keep coming! Introducing the ASUS Transformer Book T100, the 2-in-1 Ultraportable laptop with a 10″ tablet powered by Intel’s latest Bay Trail-T quad-core processor. Available in the US starting October 18th from only $349.

ASUS Transformer Book T100 Press Event [ASUS North America YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

on September 11, 2013 we [via Jonney Shih, the Chairman of Asus] introduced the ASUS Transformer Book T100 to the world. We Transform.

In retrospective:
ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 17, 2012]

Jerry Shen, CEO, ASUS (from IDF Day 2 Keynote Transcript):

The machine in my hand, T100, which features the incredible Bay Trail quad-core processor, and incredible 11 hours of battery life. With SD IPS display and stereo audios. And the detachable keyboard back features precisely keyboard and touchpad. It’s perfect for productivity. We are very proud of this machine, and very excited about the Bay Trail quad-core promise. It’s perfect, it’s a perfect two-in-one device in the market.

Dell shows off new Venue tablet during IDF 2013 Keynote [camwilmot YouTube channel, Sept 12, 2013]

Intel invited Dell up to the stage in order to show off its new Venue tablet that is powered by Intel’s new Bay Trail architecture. In addition to previewing this new Venue tablet, Dell also informed us that they are creating a new family of tablets that will be known by the Venue name. We should know more about these in early October.

Neil Hand, VP Product Marketing, Dell (from IDF Day 2 Keynote Transcript):

I am really excited to be here at the Bay Trail launch to talk about some of the new platforms that Dell can actually innovate from some of the Bay Trail technologies that Intel is bringing out.

And what I want to show you today is, firstly, one of our new Windows 8 eight-inch tablets we’ll be introducing very soon. This system is part of a new family that we’re introducing that are going to really innovate and drive new capabilities into very small new form factors.

The whole family will offer several key benefits.

Firstly, quality, quality Dell is renowned for, products that last a long time but have great performance on the screen and usability. Secondly, battery life. Anybody worry about range anxiety? Am I going to be able to turn it on and be able to use it? This really fixes that.

Security, making sure you’re connecting to a business, or you’re connecting to your home. That data is secure in transit and on the device.

And lastly, to make sure that there is connectivity, a range of 4G and LTE connectivity, so wherever you happen to be, you’ll be able to connect to the wells.

So great features in the products. But more importantly, we think, is actually being able to have fun and easy to-use products.

So with this introduction, I’m actually pleased to announce here at IDF that we’ll be branding our new family of tablets, Venue, the Dell Venue family. Venue means the place where things happen. And to us, this really is the place that things happen and becomes the center of the universe.

So you can actually carry your entire life with you, connect back, use Dell pocket clouds to be able to access content, be able to use your files and applications wherever you happen to be, really excited about them.

And October 2 in New York City, we’ll be announcing the entire range of products.

The new Air Command S Pen User Experience making the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phablet, and Galaxy Note 10.1, 2014 Edition tablet next-generation devices

September 12, 2013 7:24 pm / 2 Comments on The new Air Command S Pen User Experience making the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phablet, and Galaxy Note 10.1, 2014 Edition tablet next-generation devices

… in addition to the technology advances presented in the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing and GPU Compute is the hidden gem in the Galaxy Note 3 and GALAXY Note 10.1, 2014 Edition, launched at ‘Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2’ event [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013] post and innovations in the Companion Device Computing as envisaged and implemented by Pranav Mistry and his TTT team from Samsung: the case of Galaxy Gear + Galaxy Note 3 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013] post.

Introducing Samsung GALAXY Note 3 [SAMSUNGmobile YouTube channel, Sept 4, 2013]

(Note: for hardware specification go to Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing and GPU Compute is the hidden gem in the Galaxy Note 3 and GALAXY Note 10.1, 2014 Edition, launched at ‘Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2’ event [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013].)

[ Hardware & Design ]

The GALAXY Note 3 comes with a wider (5.7″) Full HD Super AMOLED display, yet slimmer (8.3mm) and lighter (168g) hardware design, and is powered by a 2.3 GHz Quad-Core [Qualcomm Snapdragon] processor [for LTE version, and Samsung Exynos 5 Octa for 3G only version], 3GB of RAM, 32/64 GB or user memory, 3,200 mAh battery and runs on Google’s Android 4.3 Jelly Bean OS. Also, equipped with a 13MP rear camera with Smart Stabilization and high CRI LED flash, you can take crisp photos, even in low light and active situations. Plus, it can record and play in full HD (1080p), and record in UHD (*may differ by market).

The GALAXY Note 3 also features a textured back cover and delicate stitching that delivers a premium look and feel.

[ Everyday Made Easier with S Pen ]

Air Command, a palette of features and commands which you can activate on any screen simply by hovering and clicking the S Pen button, lets you access useful features for everyday tasks such as Action Memo, Scrapbook, and S Finder.

[ Smarter Large Screen Experience ]

With a larger Super AMOLED screen, the GALAXY Note 3 not only provides a stunning and defined viewing experience but also enables multitasking capabilities that allow users to fully utilize the larger screen. The enhanced new Multi Window allows you to easily move content between applications in one quick step with the Drag and Drop mode.

For more information : http://www.samsung.com/galaxynote3

More description from Design the Story of your Life with Samsung GALAXY Note 3 [press release, Sept 4, 2013]

…

Click S Pen to make life easier, faster and more exciting

The new S Pen reinvents and modernizes the classic note-taking experience by providing the ability to accomplish everyday tasks with just one click. The advanced S Pen is designed to be fully functional as a communication driver between the phone and the user by creating essential input and control features. It plays an integral role in how users interface with the device, making all daily routines easier.

A simple click of the S Pen button while hovering over the screen introduces users to Air Command, a palette of five powerful features that truly make tasks easier and faster. With the Air Command feature, there is no need to toggle between screens, memorize commands or look up different menus. The Air Command feature provides access to the following key functions:

Action Memo allows users to handwrite a note, and automatically execute a function or convert that handwritten information into formatted content. Action Memo can instantly initiate a call, add to contacts, look up an address on a map, search the web, save a task to a to-do list, and more

Scrapbook enables users to organize or track down content and information from various sources including the web, YouTube and Gallery in one place so that users can easily look back at collected content all at once. When consumers save content for future use, Scrapbook also collects source material or URLs allowing them to easily refer back to the original source.

The Screen Write feature captures the full screen image of the current page on the device and allows users to write comments or additional information onto the captured image.

S Finder allows users to expansively search for content on their device regardless of the type. By putting in keywords or filters such as date, location, and content type, users can search related documents, events, communication threads, and even the Help page – all in one place. In addition, users can also search for hand-written content in their Notes and memo applications, as well as symbols and formulas.

Pen Window allows users to use the S Pen not only for drawing sketches or writing notes, but now also for opening a small application window for a true multitasking experience. Simply by drawing a window of any size, anywhere on the screen, users can easily and quickly open another application window such as YouTube, calculator or Browser without pausing current activity on the screen.

For more advanced note-taking, the new S Note presents a comprehensive solution that enables consumers to easily write, organize, edit and browse notes with a user-friendly interface and the Easy Chart feature. The new S Note can also be synced with Evernote or a Samsung account and be enabled for accessing and viewing from different devices. Furthermore, when a user wants only a certain part of an image to be taken from the web or Note 3 content, the advanced new Easy Clip feature allows them to roughly draw around the desired image and then it converts that content into a more precisely cropped image.

Larger Note screen delivers enriched viewing experience and enables you to do more

The Samsung GALAXY Note 3 delivers a larger screen and the increased size is matched with powerful improvements that allow users to fully utilize the additional screen space. The 5.7-inch Full HD Super AMOLED screen provides a stunning and defined video viewing experience for watching Full HD content, distinct clarity for reading and an elegant canvas for content creation.

My Magazine provides a personalized news, social media, entertainment and in-the-moment content experience. Developed through a partnership with Flipboard, it offers an integrated content consuming experience in a modern and dynamic magazine-style layout.

The GALAXY Note 3 enables enhanced multitasking capabilities that allow users to fully utilize the larger screen.

With the new Multi Window, users can toggle seamlessly between applications without closing the window or opening a new page, allowing for enhanced productivity and collaboration across programs. Consumers can also run one application in two windows at the same time. For instance, users can read the news in one browser while conducting a web search in another, or send an instant message through ChatON to a friend while reading a message from another friend.

In addition, using Drag and Drop mode within the new Multi Window, users can easily drag and drop content such as a text or image from one window to the other in an instant.

Pen Window from Air Command further enhances multitasking experience by allowing consumers to draw a window on the screen and launching popular applications while continuing current tasks on the GALAXY Note 3.

An improvement to Group Play, video sharing, is now available. Originally introduced along with the GALAXY S4, Group Play allows users to play the same music, to play games together, and to share documents. It now enables consumers to share videos and play content together with their friends simultaneously. Users can also connect up to five devices alongside each other to create a “big screen” viewing experience.

…

For a tour of the new user experience watch the Samsung GALAXY Note 3 + Gear: Official First Hands-on [SAMSUNGmobile YouTube channel, Sept 4, 2013] video:

For more information go to the separate Companion Device Computing as envisaged and implemented by Pranav Mistry and his TTT team from Samsung: the case of Galaxy Gear + Galaxy Note 3 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013] post. The overall theme of ‘Design Your Life’ for these two companion GALAXY devices you can understand by watching the Samsung GALAXY Note 3 presents “Dreams”, a digital short film [SAMSUNGmobile YouTube channel, Sept 10, 2013] video:

We follow the passion of a girl who helps save her grandfather’s shop by finding inspiration in her everyday life. With the help of the new Samsung GALAXY Note 3 and Gear, she creates her own masterpiece. We follow her journey through dance, using the innovative features of the Note 3 and Gear, like My Magazine, Action Memo, and Smart Relay, to change her everyday into something amazing. By adding a new twist to a loved classic, she takes Annie Lennox’s “Sweet Dreams” and re-envisions it with a modern take. Samsung’s vision was realized with the help of Paul Hunter who has directed videos for some of the world’s top artists like Snoop Dogg, Christina Aguilera, and Michael Jackson to name a few. To find out more about the GALAXY Note 3 and Gear, click here:http://www.samsung.com/galaxynote3

Here is also the demonstration of Samsung GALAXY Note 3 Group Play Video Sharing @IFA2013 [SamsungTomorrow YouTube channel, Sept 9, 2013]

At IFA 2013, Samsung Tomorrow TV shows this cool demonstration of Samsung’s Group Play Video Sharing function across multiple Galaxy Note 3 devices. With Group Play Video Sharing, you can not only share local videos with your friends, but also watch the same video on all devices. Furthermore, you can create a big singular video panorama across multi-screens!

as well as of the nice Samsung’s Mobile Console for Galaxy Note 3 @ IFA 2013 [SamsungTomorrow YouTube channel, Sept 9, 2013]

Samsung GALAXY products are great for gaming and here’s a game pad to make your Gaming experience EVEN BETTER. Running on a battery you can charge via micro USB, this Bluetooth-connected device even sends your screen to TVs!

What about the new Air Command S Pen User Experience on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, 2014 Edition tablet?

Here it is from the Samsung Unveils GALAXY Note 10.1: Unparalleled Tablet Viewing, Productivity and Mobility [Samsung Tomorrow, Sept 5, 2013] article

(Note: for hardware specification go to Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing and GPU Compute is the hidden gem in the Galaxy Note 3 and GALAXY Note 10.1, 2014 Edition, launched at ‘Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2’ event [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013].)

…

Richer Viewing Experience, Enhanced Multitasking

The large, bright and crystal clear screen delivers four times the pixel density of the original GALAXY Note 10.1, providing a premium content viewing experience.

The magazine style UX allows users to organize their favorite resources in an easy to use dashboard and then access that content for a stylish reading experience. Whether watching videos or reading magazines and e-books, the new GALAXY Note 10.1 provides an immersive media consumption experience. New design characteristics, like a warm and textured back cover with stitching, inspire a sense of elegance and sophistication.

The device’s screen size also enables enhanced multitasking. With Multi Window, users will be able to run separate instances of the same application, and use an enhanced S Pen to drag and drop content from one window to another. Pen Window enables users to simply draw a window of any size on the screen, and instantly access unique in-application features such as YouTube or calculator.

Improved S Pen and S Note Functionality

The updated S Pen included with GALAXY Note 10.1 improves responsiveness, delivers day-to-day efficiency enhancements and produces more creative input capabilities. The tablet also includes GALAXY Note 3’s updated S Pen features such as Action Memo, Scrapbook, Screen Write and S Finder. Combined with the tablet’s larger screen, these enhanced S Pen capabilities present users with unique creative opportunities and the space to explore them.

With new Scrapbook capabilities, users can easily indicate any interesting content with the S Pen and organize it into individualized scrapbooks, creating a log of discussion points for a future work conversation, a wish list for new clothes or a home redesign project, or a personal favorites list.

S Note has been upgraded with a more intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Users will have access to both note files and notepads, with the ability to use the S Pen to take handwritten notes. With Easy Chart, hand-drawn visualizations of data can be instantly transformed into more formal charts and graphs.

Offering Content for Enhanced Entertainment and Creativity

The new GALAXY Note 10.1 will also offer a host of exciting partner content that complements the device’s entertainment, productivity and creativity properties. With premium partner applications and free memberships and services, the new GALAXY Note 10.1 provides everything a user might need in one place.

The Samsung Content Gifts include content from leading news sources such as Bloomberg Businessweek+, The New York Times, Autodesk Sketchbook for GALAXY for painting and sketching, a redesigned version of social broadcast network Twitter optimized for the device, and much more.

In addition, the GALAXY Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) will also include a Samsung Apps widget that will direct users to additional beneficial content provided by Samsung. The widget will live on the home screen and include a “Special Offer for GALAXY” section that will highlight unique, country-based content for users.

…

Watch Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 ‘2014 edition’ hands-on [Android Central YouTube channel, Sept 4, 2013] for a demonstration:

Our hands-on with the 2014 edition Galaxy Note 10.1. Read our full coverage here: http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-announces-brand-new-galaxy-note-101-2014-edition

Finally watch this Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2 livestream (full length) [SAMSUNGmobile YouTube channel, Sept 7, 2013] in order to get the full context of the announcement, the event starts at [8:20]

Live at Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2 from the Tempodrom in Berlin where we unveil the GALAXY Note 3, GALAXY Gear and GALAXY Note 10.1 (2014 Edition).

[0:19:55]: GALAXY Note 3 and GALAXY Gear will be launched starting from September 25th in more than 140 countries. And all of these products will be promotionally available in October worldwide.

Companion Device Computing as envisaged and implemented by Pranav Mistry and his TTT team from Samsung: the case of Galaxy Gear + Galaxy Note 3

September 12, 2013 7:12 pm / Leave a comment

Then the general reception of the concept (as presented at the event) in the same business media:

Samsung Galaxy Gear Watch No Slam Dunk: Grobart [Bloomberg YouTube, Sept 4, 2013]

Bloomberg’s Sam Grobart discusses Samsung’s new Galaxy Gear smartwatch and its cost of $299. He speaks with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”

Samsung Galaxy Gear a Must-Have Watch: Blair [Bloomberg YouTube, Sept 4, 2013]

Wedge Partners’ Brian Blair discusses Samsung’s new Galaxy Gear wristwatch device after receiving a demo. He speaks with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”

Samsung Galaxy Gear: Is This the Next iPod? [Bloomberg YouTube, Sept 5, 2013]

Brian Blair, principal and senior tech analyst at Wedge Partners and Robert Burke, chairman & CEO at Robert Burke Associates, examine the market for Samsung Galaxy Gear and whether it will drive sales to other Samsung products. They speak on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg Surveillance.”

Underwhelmed by Samsung’s Galaxy Gear Watch: Om Malik [Bloomberg YouTube, Sept 5, 2013]

Om Malik, founder of GigaOm, discusses Samsung’s unveiling of the new “Galaxy Gear” wristwatch device. He speaks with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”

Pranav Mistry’s and his team’s professional background

Working Experience (from his CV)

Head, Think Tank Team at Samsung and Director of Research, Samsung Research America
2012 to current, Samsung Research America, Samsung Electronics
Co-Founder at Miztry Ltd.
2011 to current, Miztry Limited, Hong Kong
Research Assistant at Fluid Interfaces, MIT Media Lab
2008 to 2012, Fluid Interfaces Group, MIT Media Lab.
Visiting Researcher at Japan Science and Technology Agency
winter 2009, JST ERATO IGARASHI Design Interface Project, Tokyo.
Researcher at Microsoft Research
summer internship (summer 2009) with Adaptive Systems and Interaction, MSR.
Research Assistant at Ambient Intelligence, MIT Media Lab
2006 to 2008, Ambient Intelligence Group, MIT Media Lab.
Teaching Assistant at Media arts and Sciences, MIT
2007, New Paradigms in HCI, MIT Media Lab.
Research Intern with Global Connection Project
summer internship (summer 2007) with GigaPan Project (CMU, NASA, Google and UNESCO).
UX Researcher at Microsoft
2005 to 2006, Microsoft India Development Center.
Project Manager at Microsoft
summer internship (summer 2004) with Incubation Team at Microsoft India Development Center

He won INVENTION OF THE YEAR 2009 award by Popular Science (June, 2009) with: WUW / sixthsense – a wearable gestural interface [Pranav Mistry YouTube channel, Feb 11, 2009]

We’ve evolved over millions of years to sense the world around us. When we encounter something, someone or some place, we use our five natural senses to perceive information about what is facing us. That information helps us make decisions and chose the right actions to take in a situation. But arguably the most useful information that can help us make the right decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, namely the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is increasingly all available online. Moreover, Information is confined traditionally on paper or digitally on a screen. ‘WUW’ attempts to free information from its confines and releases it into the world, seamlessly integrating it with the physical world.

With the miniaturization of computing devices that fit inside our pockets, we are always connected to the digital world. However, there is no link between our interaction with these digital devices and interaction with the physical world. ‘WUW’ bridges this gap by augmenting the physical world around us with digital information and proposing natural hand gestures as the mechanism to interact with that information. ‘WUW’ brings the intangible information out into the tangible world. By using a camera and a tiny projector mounted on a hat or coupled in a pendant like device, ‘WUW’ sees what you see and visually augments any surfaces or objects you are interacting with. ‘WUW’ projects information to any surface, walls, and the objects around us, and to interact with the information through natural hand gestures, arm movements, or with the object itself. ‘WUW’ is like having the entire world as your computer.

He got honored as ‘Young Global Leader 2013’ by World Economic Forum. His personal page there says:

Pranav Mistry is a research assistant and a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. Designer, engineer and inventor, Mistry is passionate about integrating the world of information with real-world interactions, and is the inventor of SixthSense. Some of his previous work includes intelligent sticky notes that can be searched and located, and send reminders and messages; a pen that can draw in 3D; a public map that can act as Google of the physical world; and an invisible computer mouse. SixthSense was awarded the 2009 Invention Award by Popular Science. Mistry also won the Young Innovator Award TR35 by Technology Review and was named on 2010 Creativity 50 list of the most influential and inspiring creative personalities of 2010. This year, Asian Scientist honoured him as one of the 15 ultimate scientists of Asia to watch.

From those achievements watch here QUICKIES: sticky notes of 21st Century [Pranav Mistry YouTube channel, April 17, 2010]

Think Tank Team [Samsung Information Systems America (SISA), Sept 4, 2013]

The Think Tank Team (TTT) was created in May of 2012 as a group of interdisciplinary researchers, scientists, designers and engineers. Located within Samsung Research America in the heart of Silicon Valley, the team is led by Pranav Mistry and crewed by experts in fields from industrial design to physics, with experience in institutions such as MIT, Disney Imagineering, Art+Com, RISD, and others. Areas of interest include electrical engineering, optics, computational imaging, machine learning, natural language processing, visual design, computational graphics, material science, biochemistry, and others. The team’s work covers a large time scale, from products that are ready to be mass-produced, to ideas that will take many years to come to fruition. The team is always looking for people and ideas that will expand its horizons in new ways, with the mission of re-imagining existing products, creating new product classes, and exploring new materials, technologies, affordances, and experiences.

Visit the TTT site to learn more.

SEEKING EXPERTS FOR THINK TANK TEAM [SISA, Sept 4, 2013]

Full Time Positions and Internships

Who are we?

We are a small team of interdisciplinary researchers, scientists, designers and engineers located in San Jose. We are passionate about inventing experience-centric future products and technologies. We aim for real-world impact by turning our disruptive concepts into products that connect objects, environments, information and people. Our team is led by Pranav Mistry and crewed by experts in fields from industrial design to physics, with experience in institutions such as MIT, Disney Imagineering, Art+Com and others. Together we combine new designs, materials, technologies, and approaches to create the products of tomorrow.

Who are we looking for?

We seek talented and passionate researchers, designers and engineers to join our team. Areas of work include electrical engineering, optics, computational imaging, robotics, machine learning, natural language processing, visual design, computational graphics, material science, biochemistry, and others. We are looking for people who share our passions and wish to expand our mission to frontiers we haven’t thought of.

If these challenges pique your interest, send a portfolio demonstrating your combination of hands-on skills and creative thinking capabilities to TTT-hire@sisa.samsung.com .

Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing and GPU Compute is the hidden gem in the Galaxy Note 3 and GALAXY Note 10.1, 2014 Edition, launched at ‘Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2’ event

September 12, 2013 11:50 am / 2 Comments on Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing and GPU Compute is the hidden gem in the Galaxy Note 3 and GALAXY Note 10.1, 2014 Edition, launched at ‘Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2’ event

but used for 3G / WiFi versions only … while for LTE versions Qualcomm Snapdragon quad-core SoCs at 2.3 GHz are used (probably the same one used in Xiaomi Mi3).

Details

ARM big.LITTLE Hangout with the Experts [ARMflix YouTube channel, Aug 14, 2013]

A technical discussion about ARM big.LITTLE processing technology from some of ARM’s experts.

Panelists:
Robin Randhawa, Principal Software Engineer, ARM
Charles Garcia-Tobin, Advanced Product Design Group, ARM
Brian Jeff, Senior Product Manager, ARM
Ian Smythe, Director of Marketing, ARM (Moderator)

Discussion questions with timecodes:

What is big.LITTLE? 1:25
How can the system switch between cores? 5:51
How does big.LITTLE save energy, compared to running one set of cores? 8:40
Why even use the big.LITTLE configuration? 13:03
How does the Software work? 14:58 (Software models 22:15)
How does this effect applications programmers? 25:46
What are the performance benefits of big.LITTLE? 28:47
Where can silicon partners get code for this? 34:48 (Software links 36:45)
Does this run on Android? 37:25

Samsung Primes Exynos 5 Octa for ARM big.LITTLE Technology with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing Capability [press release, Sept 10, 2013]

Samsung Electronics announced its Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP) solution for the Exynos 5 Octa to fully maximize the benefits of the ARM® big.LITTLE™ technology. The HMP capability gives system-level designers the ability to develop solutions that deliver the right combination of high-performance and low-power to carry out tasks such as 3D gaming, complex augmented reality and advanced web browsing.

Samsung Exynos OCTA-pella: Performance + Efficiency in Perfect Harmony [SamsungExynos YouTube channel, Sept 9, 2013]

Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa series of mobile processors with ARM© big.LITTLE™ technology now supports heterogeneous multi-processing (HMP)! This advanced technology allows the Exynos 5 Octa processors to provide exceptional performance and increased power efficiency. In the OCTA-pella video, you’ll see how the Exynos 5 Octa uses ARM big.LITTLE processing to balance workloads across CPU cores, using the right core for the right task. Find out what else Exynos has in store on our Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/SamsungExynos and on Twitter:https://twitter.com/SamsungExynos If you want to learn more about the Exynos 5 Octa series of processors, visit our website:http://www.samsung.com/global/busines… Discover the advantages of ARM© big.LITTLE™ processing:http://www.thinkbiglittle.com/

“It’s usually assumed that the big CPU will do all the performance-critical work, however, power-efficient little cores can handle many significant workloads all on their own, so the workload is balanced within the system,” said Taehoon Kim, vice president of System LSI marketing, Samsung Electronics.

“We welcome Samsung’s continued commitment to deploying the leading-edge technology on their latest chips featuring the ARM Cortex™-A series of processors, ARM Mali™ GPUs and ARM Artisan™ physical IP.” said Noel Hurley, vice president, Strategy and Marketing, Processor Division, ARM.

HMP is the most powerful use model for ARM big.LITTLE technology, as it enables the use of all physical cores at the same time. Software threads with high priority or high computational intensity can be allocated to the ‘big’ Cortex-A15 cores while threads with less priority or are less computationally intensive, can be performed by the ‘LITTLE’ Cortex-A7 cores, enabling a highly responsive, low-energy system to be built.

Software implementation is essential to maximizing the benefits of big.LITTLE technology. Multi-processing software controls the scheduling of threads of execution to the appropriate core. In earlier versions of the big.LITTLE software, the whole processor context is moved up to the ‘big’ core or down to the ‘LITTLE’ core based on the measured work load. In-depth study and analysis of diverse use case scenarios enable Samsung to achieve efficiency and high-performance, while managing power levels to deliver optimal user environments.

The HMP solution for Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa application processors will be available to customers in 4Q of 2013.

Exynos 5 Octa: Heterogeneous Multi-Processing Capability [Samsung Exynos blog, Sept 10, 2013]

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that the Exynos 5 Octa packs a serious punch when it comes to processing power and energy efficiency. Now, the team at Samsung has made the Exynos 5 Octa even better with the introduction of a new Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP) solution.

Overview of big.LITTLE Technology

Before we jump into the benefits of HMP, let’s take a step back and go over the basics ofARM® big.LITTLE technology. In the Exynos 5 Octa, eight CPU cores are responsible for everything from browsing the web to playing your favorite game on your 5 Octa-powered mobile device. Four “big” 1.8GHz ARM®Cortex™-A15 cores handle intensive tasks like graphically rich gaming or HD video playback. Less intensive tasks like e-mail or text functions are tackled by four “LITTLE” 1.3GHz Cortex™-A7 cores. By dividing and conquering tasks and assigning them to the proper CPU cores, big.LITTLE technology maximizes performance while minimizing power loss.

HMP Makes big.LITTLE Technology Even Better

Now this is where HMP comes into play. Like a sports team, big.LITTLE technology relies on a software “coach” to call the plays and assign tasks to each core. In a basic implementation of big.LITTLE technology, this “coach” would alternate between using “big” and “LITTLE” CPU cores based on the computational intensity of any given task, and one core or cluster of cores would remain inactive while its counterpart was engaged.

With HMP, all eight of the CPU cores in the Exynos 5 Octa can be utilized at the same time. This provides users with an unlimited mobile experience in the current mobile environment and also paves the way for more advanced and complex functionality in the future. HMP is extremely versatile. Using a global load balancing scheduler, HMP can assign a single core to handle a task with low computational intensity in order to maximize power efficiency. On the flipside, HMP can also simultaneously utilize each of the eight individual cores in the 5 Octa to run multiple tasks in real time. The global load balancing scheduler pays attention to user workloads and will pull in the necessary available resources for the system to run flexibly and efficiently. By analyzing and assigning tasks,this highly complex software system maximizes efficiency by balancing CPU workload.

The result is the most advanced use of big.LITTLE technology to date and a huge leap forward for multi-processing capability in mobile devices. By allowing for the simultaneous operation of both “big” and “LITTLE” cores in the Exynos 5 Octa, Samsung offers an optimized HMP solution to the balancing act of maximizing mobile device capability while minimizing power loss.

Samsung has always been a leader in big.LITTLE technology, and this new Octa-core HMP solution is an industry first. HMP sets the stage for the future as mobile devices are increasingly called upon to handle complex and graphically rich tasks. Through this innovative solution, the benefits of big.LITTLE technology are maximized to their full potential. Get ready, because the future of mobile processing is evolving, and the Exynos 5 Octa with HMP is leading the way.

Samsung Brings Enhanced Mobile Graphics Performance Capabilities to New Exynos 5 Octa Processor [press release, July 23, 2013]

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor solutions, today introduced the latest addition to the Exynos product family with top level of graphic performance driven by a six-core ARM® Mali™-T628 GPU processor for the first time in the industry. With mobile use case scenarios becoming increasingly complex, Samsung’s newest eight-core ARM Cortex™ application processor gives designers a powerful, energy efficient tool to build multifaceted user interface capabilities directly into the system architecture. Samsung will demonstrate the new Exynos 5 family at SIGGRAPH 2013 in the ARM booth, #357; Exhibit Hall C at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Samsung’s new Exynos 5 Octa (product code: Exynos 5420), based on ARM Mali™-T628 MP6 cores, boosts 3D graphic processing capabilities that are over two times greater than the Exynos 5 Octa predecessor. The newest member of the Exynos family is able to perform General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) accelerating complex and computationally intensive algorithms or operations, traditionally processed by the CPU. This product also supports OpenGL® ES 3.0 and Full Profile Open CL 1.1, which enables the horsepower needed in multi-layer rendering of high-end, complex gaming scenarios, post-processing and sharing of photos and video, as well as general high-function multi-tasking operations.

“ARM welcomes the latest addition to the successful Exynos Octa 5 series, which uses ARM’s Mali GPU solution to dramatically improve graphics performance,” said Pete Hutton, executive vice president & general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM. “ARM big.LITTLE™ and ARM Artisan® Physical IP technologies continue to be at the heart of the Octa series and now complement the new functionality brought by ARM GPU Compute. This combination enables unprecedented capabilities in areas such as facial detection and gesture control, and brings desktop-quality editing of images and video to mobile devices.”

“Demand for richer graphic experiences is growing rapidly nowadays,” said Taehoon Kim, vice president of System LSI marketing, Samsung Electronics. “In order to meet that demand from both OEMs and end users, we developed this processor which enables superb graphical performance without compromising power consumption.”

The newest Exynos processor is powered by four ARM Cortex®-A15™ processors at 1.8GHz with four additional Cortex-A7™cores at 1.3 GHz in a big.LITTLE processing implementation. This improves the CPU processing capability by 20 percent over the predecessor by optimizing the power-saving design.

In addition, the mobile image compression (MIC) IP block inside this System-on-Chip successfully lowers the total system power when bringing pictures or multimedia from memory to display panel. This feature results in maximizing the usage hours of mobile devices with a high-resolution display such as WQXGA (2500×1600), in particular when browsing the web or doing multimedia application requiring the frequent screen refresh.

The new Exynos 5 Octa processor also features a memory bandwidth of 14.9 gigabytes per second paired with a dual-channel LPDDR3 at 933MHz, enabling an industry-leading fast data processing and support for full HD Wifi display. This new processor also incorporates a variety of full HD 60 frames per second video hardware codec engines for 1080p video recording and playback.

The new family of Exynos 5 Octa is currently sampling to customers and is scheduled for mass-production in August.

For Further information :

Samsung Exynos brand site : www.samsung.com/exynos
Samsung Exynos twitter : www.twitter.com/samsungexynos
Samsung Exynos facebook : www.facebook.com/samsungexynos
Samsung Exynos Youtube : www.youtube.com/samsungexynos

Transforming your mobile and TV experience with GPU Compute [Trina Watt on Multimedia blog of ARM, July 22, 2013]

As a mother of three young children I am very aware of their approach to technology, and how unaccepting they are of the established ways of interacting with devices that anyone over the age of 18 is used to. The first time I gave my 5 year old daughter a mouse she looked at me as if I was mad – why use this when you can touch the screen? Gesture, touch and voice are much more natural not only to elementary kids but to us all.

ARM has been working with our partners for several years on how GPUs can improve user experience, initially through bringing improved graphics to a wider range of devices, but more recently, improving interaction with your devices through GPU Compute support in the Mali-T600 series of GPUs. ARM have just created a video that gives more background on the potential use cases for GPU Compute and how we can expect them to change the way we interact with even more of our electronic devices.

ARM brings GPU Compute to mobile devices [ARMflix YouTube channel, July 22, 2013]

GPU Compute is becoming reality. Its advanced computational abilities and energy efficiencies are inspiring innovation in the mobile industry, innovation which will drive novel, exciting and intuitive user experiences for consumers. In this video ARM explains the key features of GPU Compute and sets out a vision of what GPU Compute will enable for consumers. Discover GPU Compute with the ARM® Mali™-T600 series http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics-plus-gpu-compute/index.php

Gesture control is becoming increasingly popular in premium devices. What GPU Compute does is bring those features to a wider range of devices – you can expect to see it being built into more DTVs, tablets, and smartphones. GPU Compute enables smaller gestures to be supported even in low lighting, so searching for the remote down the back of the sofa will become a thing of the past! I am interested to see how we solve the “who is in control” issue once there is no longer a remote control to fight over…

Facial detection can also benefit from GPU Compute. Facial detection brings features like “smile detection” when taking photos, or having a camera only take the picture when everyone is looking in the same direction and has their eyes open. These types of services can link to and enhance other features, such as your tablet or DTV being aware of who is looking at a screen so it can make sure the content is suitable to the audience, or powering down when no one is watching.

More of our daily lives are being captured through smartphones and tablets. I have numerous nearly unusable videos that have been shot in motion – having video stabilization built into my mobile devices will help me capture more of the dynamic moments in my kids’ early years, and being able to edit those videos on my tablet (to crop out the inevitable shot of my feet before posting on Facebook for the grandparents to see!) is just another one of the benefits to come.

So next time I fall asleep in front of the television watching the latest episode of Game of Thrones, GPU Compute will help me, a tired parent, know how far I got through the last episode – then pick up where I left off! Got to love technology.

Trina Watt, Director of Channel Marketing, Media Processing Division, ARM.
I like to think of myself as a “geek in marketers clothing”. Gadgets and technology have been a passion for me as long I can remember – from dismantling my first radio when I was about 8 to now running around regularly with 3 phones, a tablet and laptop to feed my tech thirst. I started in the tech industry nearly 20 years ago in Motorola and I have never ventured far from it. I am currently focused on promoting the visually exciting Mali graphics processors. I get to work with a wide range of partners who are creating the innovative devices of the future. For a geek it doesn’t get much better than that!

Spotlight on the New Exynos 5 Octa [Samsung Exynos blog, Aug 8, 2013]

Meet the new and improved Exynos 5 Octa processor, designed to bring enhanced graphics performance and energy efficiency to the next generation of high-end smartphones and tablets. Advanced ARM® GPU Compute technology and a suite of power-saving features allow our latest processor to run complex applications while conserving battery life – because a mobile device isn’t really mobile if you have to worry about charging it all of the time. We’ll fill you in on the most important specs for this new SoC and give you an idea of what to expect from future devices that run on it.

Enhanced Graphics with New ARM® Mali™-T628 GPU

The new Exynos 5 Octa (5420) packs an ARM® Mali™-T628 GPU, which is powerful enough to support 3D graphics processing that’s more than twice as fast as the Exynos 5410, for smoother rendering and diminished lag times. The Mali-T628 is also capable of GPU Compute functionality, meaning it can perform general-purpose computing and intensive tasks to help alleviate the CPU’s workload and speed up processing times. In combination with big.LITTLE architecture, GPU Computing significantly increases power efficiency for noticeably better battery life. OpenGL® ES 3.0 and Full profile OpenCL™ 1.1 support provide the additional power that’s needed to render high-quality, complex gaming scenarios and handle comprehensive photo and video editing.

Making Advanced Applications Possible

GPU Compute technology was once limited to PCs and other desktop devices, but ARM Mali GPUs are bringing this functionality to mobile. There are a lot of advantages associated with GPU Computing that will open up opportunities for innovative applications on mobile devices that use the new Exynos 5 Octa (5420).

Video and image stabilization and editing – Get creative! Edit photos right after you take them or apply filters to live video directly on your smartphone.
Facial detection – Refined facial recognition allows for enhanced security features and content restrictions for children.
“Open eye” detection – You won’t have to retake nearly as many photos if your smartphone’s camera only captures an image when everyone is looking at the camera.

Increased Power Efficiency for Extended Use

The new Exynos 5 Octa (5420) features four 1.8GHz ARM® Cortex™-A15 cores and four 1.3GHz Cortex™-A7 cores in an optimized big.LITTLE™ configuration. This power-saving design provides 20% increased CPU performance over the previous version of the processor, but with 70 percent greater energy efficiency than Cortex-A15 cores alone. The system switches amongst eight cores of Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 processors depending on workload, selecting the right core for the right task and saving power in the process.

If you’re an avid mobile gamer who’s into FPS games with complex graphics or fast-paced, high-frame-rate racing games, the “big” Cortex-A15 cores are there to do the heavy lifting. Even if gaming isn’t your thing, you’ll notice faster page loading times and better graphics quality when browsing websites with high-quality media. Big.LITTLE technology is all about balance, so the “LITTLE” Cortex-A7 cores step in to take care of lighter workloads, like pulling up work emails, playing music and texting. The Cortex-A7 series is the most energy-efficient processor that ARM has to offer, helping your device go longer between charges so you can stay connected while you’re busy living life.

All of you Photoshoppers and Instagram addicts will be happy to hear that the Exynos 5 Octa (5420 ) also features Mobile Image Compression (MIC), which lowers the system power required to bring photos from memory to your screen for processing. This means photo-editing doesn’t unduly impact battery life, and you can get the maximum use out of your mobile devices with high-resolution displays.

To learn more about the flexibility that GPU Compute technology brings to the new Exynos 5 Octa, check out this guest blog post by Trina Watt, Director of Channel Marketing for ARM.

More specs and details can also be found on the new Exynos 5 Octa (5420) product page.

New Exynos 5 Octa with GPU Compute Enables Cool New Applications [Samsung Exynos blog, Aug 1, 2013]

Recently Samsung announced their latest addition to the Exynos 5 Octa family. With the ARM® Mali™-T628 as its GPU, this is the first silicon to reach the market which contains a second generation processor from the ARM Mali-T600 series. Improved GPU support is the key differentiating focus of this version of the Exynos Octa. In the past GPU support was solely about graphics performance; however, with the inclusion of the ARM Mali-T628 in Exynos 5 Octa, Samsung have brought market-leading GPU Compute support to mobile devices.

The ARM Mali-T628 comes with support for a wide range of APIs including OpenGL® ES 3.0 and 2.0, OpenCL™ andRenderscript™. This breadth of API support opens up a wider range of use cases for consumers. ARM has been spearheading activities for OpenGL ES 3.0 since its launch and this momentum continued with the ARM Mali-T600 series becoming one of the first to gain conformance. ARM’s continuous market driving is now expanding to the GPU Compute area. Previously, GPU Compute has only been in PC- or desktop-style devices. Now, ARM Mali GPUs are enabling GPU Compute within the mobile power boundary. Samsung started shipping the ARM Mali-T604 GPU back in back in October 2012 and since that point the ecosystem around GPU Compute has been growing with more and more partners seeing the advantages that GPU Compute can bring.

These advantages include video and image stabilization and editing (meaning users don’t have to wait to get home until they edit and upload), facial detection (enabling enhanced security, access to suitable content and smile detection) and “eyes open” detection (so that the photo is taken only when everyone is looking at the camera or smiling.)

GPU Compute also enables the application of filters to images and live video, opening up new forms of creativity. To see more of what GPU Compute can provide across smartphones, tablets and DTVs, watch this video.

ARM brings GPU Compute to mobile devices [ARMflix YouTube channel, July 22, 2013]

Since this is the second generation of the ARM Mali-T600 series, additional architectural refinements have been made which mean that the ARM Mali-T628, when at the same performance point as an ARM Mali-T604, provides a 50% energy-efficiency improvement, alternatively, when consuming the same level of power, offers substantial increased performance. GPU Compute is about making current use cases more efficient. The combination of GPU Compute and ARM’s big.LITTLE™ technology in one SoC opens up new opportunities for task management. Certain tasks can be handled more quickly and using less energy on a GPU then on a CPU – math-intensive activities in particular often run better on the parallelized GPU architecture. This means you get twice the energy efficiency benefit when you combine GPU Compute and big.LITTLE, as Samsung have done in the Exynos 5 Octa. The GPU takes suitable tasks off the CPU, allowing the CPU to work more often in LITTLE mode and ultimately increases energy efficiency on the GPU and energy savings on the CPU. It also frees up the CPU to run other, more latency-sensitive tasks.

At the end of the day, GPU Compute provides more flexibility in what consumers are able to do with their devices – meaning more end devices will be available which are both energy efficient and enablers of cool new applications, so consumers will no longer have to sacrifice one feature for the other.

Trina Watt, Director of Channel Marketing, Media Processing Division, ARM.
I like to think of myself as a “geek in marketers clothing”. Gadgets and technology have been a passion for me as long I can remember – from dismantling my first radio when I was about 8 to now running around regularly with 3 phones, a tablet and laptop to feed my tech thirst. I started in the tech industry nearly 20 years ago in Motorola and I have never ventured far from it. I am currently focused on promoting the visually exciting Mali graphics processors. I get to work with a wide range of partners who are creating the innovative devices of the future. For a geek it doesn’t get much better than that!

GPU Compute Technology: Benefits in the New Exynos 5 Octa [Samsung Exynos blog, Aug 19, 2013]

Mobile processors have advanced rapidly over the past several years due to the development of new technologies and manufacturing processes that allow for significantly increased performance and power efficiency. A more recent development from ARM®, GPU Compute technology harnesses the power of a component that was traditionally reserved for graphical processing and uses it to improve system-level performance and workload distribution. We’ll review the advantages and applications of this technology in the new Exynos 5 Octa (5420) to give you a better understanding of its importance.

What is GPU Compute Technology?

Over time, the market has come to expect higher and higher resolution displays, which has been a key driver in GPU advancements. Both resolution and power increasingly dominate processing requirements for the next generation of smartphones and tablets. As we demand more and more of our mobile devices, we have to find ways to meet these evolving needs without sacrificing power efficiency. Enter ARM’s general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), also known as GPU Compute technology.GPU computing is best defined by the ARM experts who developed it:

“…The computational performance of the GPU, historically used for graphics, is harnessed to augment the main processor (CPU) for certain applications where the GPU architecture will be more effective. The result is improved performance and energy-efficiency and a more efficient use of the system as a whole, making computational photography, computer vision, advanced imaging, point-of-interest extraction and augmented reality possible because of the extended processing capacity.”

Long story short, GPU Compute allows a system to match workloads to specific compute devices for optimal performance and power savings. ARM GPUs with GPU Compute are more efficient and better suited than the CPU when it comes to executing certain tasks such as math-intensive operations. By taking on these tasks, the GPU alleviates some of the CPU’s workload and lowers overall power consumption.

Advantages of GPU Compute

GPU Compute technology comes with a host of benefits, from increased performance and energy savings to ramped-up application support. Our most recent processor, the new Exynos 5 Octa (5420), packs an ARM® Mali™-T628 with GPU Compute that significantly enhances graphics performance. Compared to the Mali-T604 GPU in the Exynos 5 Dual, the Mali-T628 can reach the same performance levels while providing a 50% improvement in energy efficiency. The newer generation of the Mali-T600 series also shows increased performance levels when consuming the same amount of power. By combining GPU Compute technology with ARM® big.LITTLE™ processing architecture, the new Exynos 5 Octa benefits from two layers of energy efficiency.

Trina Watt, Director of Channel Marketing at ARM, recently wrote a guest blog post on the advantages associated with GPU Compute functionality. Depending on the mobile device, GPU Compute enables video and image stabilization and editing, advanced facial detection, “eyes open” detection for photo-taking and filter application to images and live video. All of these capabilities open up a wide range of possibilities for advanced apps and features that aren’t currently supported on many phones and tablets. Better still, overall optimization of system workload means you can run those cutting-edge apps without unduly draining battery power – a win-win outcome for any mobile system.

GPU Compute in Action

GPU Compute has already made its way into mobile devices through Exynos 5 Dual -equipped products like the Google Nexus 10. You’ll see the benefits of this technology in action once you experience this tablet’s super high-resolution display. With a 2560×1600 (WQXGA) screen resolution, text is sharper and colors are more vivid than anything you’ve experienced on mobile.

You’ll also find this functionality on advanced development boards like the Exynos 5 Dual-powered Arndale board, which includes a number of common peripherals. With this full-fledged prototyping platform, developers can get a handle on working with GPU Compute-equipped systems in preparation for the first round of mobile devices to implement the new Exynos 5 Octa (5420).

By pulling together high-end ARM CPUs, ARM Mali graphics with GPU Compute and advanced technologies like ARM big.LITTLE processing, Samsung Exynos has fully realized the ideal GPU Compute system. Stay tuned for news about upcoming devices that will run on the new Exynos 5 Octa (5420)!

Need to know more? Head over to ARM’s blog to find out how GPU Compute technology can transform your mobile and TV experience.

Up close and personal with the latest Mali demos [Trina Watt on Multimedia blog of ARM, Aug 27, 2013]

The buzz at this year’s SIGGRAPH was fantastic and you have already heard from a number of my colleagues including Jem Davies with “Back from SIGGRAPH 2013 – Mali Rocks” and Akshay Agarwal with “From Advanced Graphics to Casual Gaming in the Cali Summer – Mali Everywhere.” But would you like to see more for yourself? Well now you can!

Check out our latest demos on ARMFlix and hear from our partners including Samsung, Unity and GameStick. I particularly recommend the ARM Trollheim demo as a great place to start, with Phill Smith explaining how OpenCL™ can vastly improve procedural terrain generation.

ARM Mali Trollheim demo: in-depth overview [ARMflix YouTube channel, Aug 27, 2013]

Phill Smith, Demo Manager at ARM, compares two methods of texture generation with the Trollheim demo. The first demonstration, on Exynos 5 Octa hardware with an ARM® Mali™-T628 GPU, generates terrain using GPU Shaders; the second, on the Arndale Development Board with an ARM Mali-T604 GPU, uses OpenCL™.

An immediate hardware comparison (call it obvious if you will, but we could hardly start with anything else) is first on our list to share with you. Jae-Uck Ahn, Marketing Manager for Samsung and representative for the new Exynos 5 Octa processor, analyzes the performance of our first and second generation ARM® Mali™-T600 series GPUs and clearly points out the advantages which the ARM Mali-T628 has over its predecessor, the ARM Mali-T604; to name but a few these include brighter colours, sharper images, higher frame rates – and that’s not even mentioning the massive increase in performance efficiency.

Samsung Exynos 5 Octa on ARM Mali – Siggraph 2013 [ARMflix YouTube channel, Aug 27, 2013]

Jaeuck Ahn, Marketing Manager, Samsung Electronics, describes the features and benefits of the recently announced Samsung Exynos 5 Octa based on ARM Mali-T628 MP6 GPUs, 4 ARM Cortex-A15 processors and 4 ARM Cortex-A7 processors with ARM big.LITTLE technology. Jaeuck then demos the Exynos 5420 platform versus the Exynos 5 Dual based on the Mali-T604 GPU based Nexus 10 platform showing a 2x improvement in graphics performance

And it’s not just regular mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, which Mali is involved in. Our vision is to bring stunning visual computing to all mobile and consumer devices and the GameStick provides a fantastic example of Mali powering alternative gadgets. John Vega, Games Relationship Manager for GameStick, explains here how simply converting mobile games, which are now frequently designed for touch screens, to a new format can generate a hugely different, more interactive and responsive user experience – all still centred around great graphics supplied by the Mali-400 GPU.

Improving the mobile gaming experience with GameStick [ARMflix YouTube channel, Aug 27, 2013]

John Vega, Games Relationship Manager at GameStick, demonstrates the touch-based iOS mobile application The Other Brothers running on a big screen with the GameStick.

The extent of API support in GPUs is a critical factor on the quality of graphics of the resultant product. As APIs evolve each generation is enabling more and better features. Android™’s recent upgrade to 4.3and its inclusion of support for OpenGL® ES 3.0 will go a long way in enhancing the look and experience of Android games (and as we’re in >50% of Android tablets and >20% of Android smartphones this is a big deal for the Mali ecosystem – especially as our GPUs already had support for all the latest APIs). A direct comparison of the capabilities of two different APIs is an excellent way of showing this and here Unity demonstrates the differences between OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0 on a Nexus 10.

Unity discuss the benefits of OpenGL® ES 3.0 [ARMflix YouTube channel, Aug 27, 2013]

Renaldas Zioma of Unity discusses the experience of employing OpenGL ES 3.0 in the latest version of Unity Chase. Includes a visual comparison with the OpenGL ES 2.0 version.

One final video to share with you is not of a demo, but is a great wrap up to this blog and to the first half of ARM Mali’s year as a whole. Jem Davies, VP of Mali Technology, gives an overview of where Mali is and where he sees Mali GPUs going in the future. The general conclusion that can be made is that many more first-rate demos showing off new technological advancements can be expected from the Mali team in the very near future.

Interview with ARM’s VP of Mali Technology [ARMflix YouTube channel, Aug 27, 2013]

Jem Davies, VP of Technology for ARM’s Media Processor Division, discusses the growth in ARM® Mali™ GPU popularity and the opportunities for innovation that the ARM Mali-T600 series with GPU Compute is opening up. [1:34 Samsung is setting the way in terms of trend-setting devices 1:38 the new form factors like the phablets and 1:41 the tablets that they’ve been producing and the 1:44 the Mali partners here want to see Mali being used in these really 1:48 trend-setting devices, the things that are 1:52 approaching new markets, and knowing that they can buy with confidence that 1:56 there’s a 1:57 whole variety of market segments now being addressed ny our partners.]

ARM’s predictions for the future electronic media & entertainment industry [Matt Spencer on Multimedia blog of ARM, Sept 5, 2013]

The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) is rapidly approaching. This is one of the leading conferences in the electronic media and entertainment sectors. It is a great place to find out about the future trends in media for the broadcast and mobile markets.

In this blog post, I am going to make a few predictions on what will be big at IBC, and as a result will be coming to your living room in the near future.

Natural UI

A Natural UI (NUI) is a man-machine interface that should be imperceptible to the user. A simple gesture with your hand, a smile, a conversation – “Hey TV, what’s on now… Have I seen that one before? OK, let’s watch it then.” Creating a more seamless interaction between man and machine is going to be one of the next big driving factors in consumer electronics. However, saying that, nobody has yet managed to create one that is a brand USP – has anyone bought a TV because you can wave at it?

At IBC, we will be seeing a raft of new improvements in the fields of gesture detection, face and speech recognition plus many others. All of these can be used to improve the realisation of NUI, and all of which can benefit from use of OpenCL™ in the ARM® Mali™ T6xx GPUs.Great examples of this can be found with some of our Mali partners such as eyeSight™, SoftKinetic™, CrunchFish and Ittiam®, all of whom are making great use of OpenCL to improve performance in both speed and energy consumption whilst performing what would traditionally be a highly CPU compute intensive task.

But what does this mean in terms of an actual on-screen UI? An implementation of a NUI is going to have to be as subtle as the interaction model that is driving it. This is the part of the NUI story that I believe will be in its infancy on the show floor at IBC.

To implement a UI that feels natural requires a lot of visual processing and this is where an ARM Mali GPU comes in. Imagine the use case where we want to show the results of the query “What’s on TV tonight”. The current trend in the UI space would be to de-focus the full screen video by either shrinking it to allow room for the results to be shown or overlaying the results over the video with a simple alpha effect. This is neither a natural nor unobtrusive way of pulling my focus to the results of the query. To do this unobtrusively required changing my physical focus point to the new information whilst not taking it fully away from the video. A simple way of achieving this would use a full screen Gaussian Blur effect to the video and overlaying the results in sharp focus over the top. This kind of process requires use of a GPU.

So, even though the NUI principles require that the UI is mostly invisible, we can see that the harder we try to achieve this, the harder the GPU is going to have to work.

UltraHD

Having seen UltraHD content for the first time last year at IBC, I have to say that the impact is immediate. There is no need to wear glasses as with current 3D technologies, the pictures seem to come alive with huge levels of detail and vibrant colours. There will be a lot of technology at IBC to help deliver broadcast UltraHD content to consumers from cameras and HEVC encoders through to STBs and TVs.

In terms of hardware accelerating HEVC content, the current generation of hardware does not have native capability to decode this content. So a traditional approach would be to use the CPU to decode the video, which would be a battery and CPU intensive task. ARM has recently been working with Ittiam to offload this compute intensive task to the GPU to improve decode performance for frame rate and battery consumption.

But what about the UI? Rendering a flowing, responsive UI at UltraHD resolutions is not an easy task. There are many more pixels that will need to be flung around the screen and the desire for browsers and UIs to hit a jank-free 60fps requires a top-of-the-range GPU combined with sufficient memory with high bandwidth. When the subtle complexities of NUI are added to the equation, the next generation of performance-efficient GPUs will be earning their keep in the consumer TV and set-top box (STB) space.

So the prediction for IBC in the UltraHD arena is that there will be a lot of new hardware, both consumer and professional, but the user experiences on these devices will be in their early stages. We will start to see chipsets designed with the specific GPU needs of UltraHD resolutions, but implementations of User Interfaces on this new class of devices will not be very mature.

Rise of the Companion

The use of a companion device to augment live and recorded content will also be a big part of the show. This will partly be delivered by APIs that allow the synchronization of the content on the main screen and the application running on the companion device. From a UI perspective, I would expect to see a drive towards cross platform application frameworks.

To ease integration into the companion device and to allow rapid deployment of new applications, I would expect to see this implementation of the companion experience realised using HTML5. HTML5 is a great platform to enable this cross connectivity and interface design, but there can be difficulties getting the required performance due to the underlying browser and JavaScript engine implementations.

I would therefore expect to see a number of companies at IBC showing both bottom up and top down approaches to solving the problem. The bottom up approach would require bespoke rendering and JavaScript engines that solve some of these questions, whilst the top down approach will give you performance debugging tools and frameworks to help identify and solve performance bottlenecks in the HTML5 applications.

I see HTML everywhere

HTML5 will be the de-facto standard for implementing User Interfaces at the show. The problem with HTML5, however, is that a lot of UI implementations end up looking very similar. You can often tell an HTML5 UI just by looking at it.

Now that HTML5 is the standard for UIs I would expect to see more differentiation in the implementations. Vendors will be more experimental and start to push the bounds of standard web design when approaching their interfaces. More animation, more effects… more pazazz! It will no longer be acceptable to put a few buttons on the screen with a simple highlight and expect consumers to accept this as a good UI design.

ARM’s position

It is an exciting time to be in the market, with a lot of great new technologies maturing and filtering through to consumer products. ARM is in a great position at the heart of this process, and Mali technology is going to be key to the success of some of these initiatives with its adoption of technologies such as OpenGL® ES 3.0, OpenCL 1.1 and its work with key technology partners.

We are already seeing great performance from next generation Mali-based devices and the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Mali-T628 MP6 shows class-leading performance. I see a bright future for Mali-based devices in this exciting and fast paced industry.

Matt Spencer, UI and Browser Marketing Manager, Media Processing Division, ARM. Matt is a technologist and innovator at heart, working for 15 years on embedded platforms in every manner of language from assembler through to JavaScript. He recently made the move to the ‘dark side’ (Marketing), for which he hopes he hasn’t lost the respect of his technical peers and, more importantly, where he hopes to help educate and bring like-minded engineers together with the goal of making embedded systems rock.

Xiaomi announcements: from Mi3 to Xiaomi TV

September 5, 2013 11:27 am / 1 Comment on Xiaomi announcements: from Mi3 to Xiaomi TV

An Official Video of the MI3 & MITV Launch Event (with English & Chinese subtitles). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR REAL UNDERSTANDING OF XIAOMI!)

Read before: Assesment of the Xiaomi phenomenon before the global storm is starting on Sept 5 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 30, 2013]
Watch before: Smartphone Maker Xiaomi Takes on Apple in China [Bloomberg TV, Sept 6, 2013] Xiaomi CEO and Founder Lei Jun discusses the company’s growth and competition with Apple on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”
Read after: Exclusive: Hugo Barra Talks About His Future at Xiaomi and Why He Really Left Google [AllTingsD, Sept 12, 2013] … “There is no question the phone business is very low margin today, but they want to get to a place where they can sell the device at cost and then sell high-margin services to make that phone experience even better,” said Barra. … “The aspiration for the founders is that Xiaomi will become a global company that happens to be in China,” he said. “If I do my job right, in a few years, the world will be talking about Xiaomi in the same way that they talk about Google and Apple today.”

Introducing Xiaomi MIUI MI3 (3D) [MrMiui YouTube channel, Sept 5, 2013]

Check this thread for Xiaomi New Product Convention 2013http://en.miui.com/thread-7486-1-1.html (Live)

Xiaomi … 2 hours ago

ON AIR [Xiaomi 2013 New Product Announcement Event]
#MiPhone 3: The Fastest Smartphone#

Dual Platform – Nvidia Tegra 4 quad-core processors (1.8GHz A15 + A15) with 72 GeForce GPU cores + Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 (8974AB quad-core 2.3GHz + 28nm HPM)). MiPhone 3’s overall performance increased 40% (compare to MiPhone 2S).
Screen – Sharp and LG 5-inch 1080P IPS display with ultra-sensitive touch. It works even when your figures are wet. You can set to recognize your figures even wearing gloves;
Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 RAM+16GB eMMC4.5 flash
Battery – 3050mAh battery;
Camera – SONY 13 MP Exmor RS CMOS back camera, 2MP BSI front camera
Supports NFC & 2.4/5G WiFi

Xiaomi … Yesterday

ON AIR [Xiaomi 2013 New Product Announcement Event]
#MiPhone 3: The Fastest Smartphone

Size: 114mm×72mm×8.1mm, weight: only 145g;
Six official colors;
Camera comes with Intelligent beauty corrector. It can also identify age and gender.
The GPS can preserve the satellite trajectory for 7 days.
Immersion vibration function with situational vibrate mode.
Price – USD$327 for 16GB; USD$408 for 64GB.

Tegra 4 Processors [NVIDIA, Feb 19, 2013]
Cortex-A15 Processor [ARM, Oct 31, 2012]
NVIDIA Introduces Groundbreaking Camera Technology With Chimera — World’s First Mobile Computational Photography Architecture [press release, Feb 19, 2013]
Nvidia Tegra4 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 with HDR [High Dynamic Range imaging] video and photo engine [Charbax YouTube channel, March 2, 2013]

Nvidia is releasing their quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor, here demonstrating their Chimera camcorder and photography engine that enables fast and easy HDR [High Dynamic Range imaging, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dynamic-range_imaging%5D photography and video recording. They have a special sensor and technology that allows one optical system to record enough range to create HDR video at full 1080p 30fps framerate enabling also HDR photography on all upcoming Tegra4 devices without needing to take more than one picture. Tegra4 can playback 4K video, it has a 72-core GPU enabling advanced graphics and GPU Compute and a lot of other features.
NVIDIA Tegra 4 Family CPU Architecture – 4-PLUS-1 Quad core [NVIDIA whitepaper, Feb 24, 2013]
NVIDIA Tegra 4 Family GPU Architecture [NVIDIA whitepaper, March 6, 2013] … “the GPU also helps support 4K [4K Ultra HD] video output to high-end 4K video display” …
Chimera™: The NVIDIA Computational Photography Architecture [NVIDIA whitepaper, Feb 21, 2013]
Tegra 4 posts [NVIDIA blog, Jan 8 … Aug 23 … , 2013]
Nvidia sees growing Tegra 4 orders [Digitimes, Sept 9, 2013]

Nvidia has recently started receiving orders for its Tegra 4 processor, and in addition to the recently launched Mi3 smartphone from China-based vendor Xiaomi, Nvidia has also landed orders for Microsoft’s second-generation Surface RT as well as Asustek, Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard (HP) tablets, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

The Mi3 is the first smartphone to adopt the Tegra 4 processor.

Nvidia is also supplying its Tegra 4 to Asustek for its 10-inch New Transformer Pad tablet, HP for its 10-inch Slatebook 10 x2 and Toshiba for its 10-inch Excite Pro. Nvidia is reportedly also considering releasing an own-brand tablet.

Nvidia has also been aggressively promoting its Shield gaming device, trying to compete against the 3DS and PS Vita with a price of US$299.

Snapdragon 800 Processors [Qualcomm, May 1, 2013]
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Product Brief [Qualcomm, Aug 5, 2013]
Qualcomm Snapdragon UltraHD [QUALCOMMVlog YouTube channel, June 27, 2013]

Snapdragon 800 is the first mobile processor that can record and playback UltraHD. Watch as Aytac Biber, Senior Product Manager, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., explains how this feature is key to creating the best multimedia experience for consumers.
Qualcomm Snapdragon HD Audio [QUALCOMMVlog YouTube channel, June 27, 2013]

Fifty percent of the multimedia experience revolves around audio. Watch as Ravi Satyanarayanan, Director, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., explains how the Snapdragon 800 facilitates exciting features such as multimode capture and playback, 7.1 surround sound, and other advancements in audio quality.
Snapdragon 800 Posts [Qualcomm Snapdragon Processors blog, Jan 7 … Sept 4 … , 2013]
Snapdragon 800 Posts [OnQ blog, Jan 7 … Jul 24 … , 2013]
What Can You Build around Snapdragon 800? [OnQ Blog, June 18, 2013]
Inside the Snapdragon™ 800 Series Processors – The New Adreno™ 330 GPU [OnQ Blog, Jan 11, 2013]

Photos Taken by Xiaomi MI3 (HD) 小米手机随手拍 (高清) [MrMiui YouTube channel, Sept 6, 2013], watch in either 720p or 1080p HD, and you could even watch in the original HD

MIUI is one of the most popular Android ROMs in the world. It is based on Android 2.3 and 4.1, featuring a rich user experience and user customizable themes. MIUI is updated every Friday based on feedback from its users. Now with over 20 million users and 17 MIUI fan sites worldwide, MIUI is the choice of many Android users globally.

Immersion Enters Multi-Year License Agreement With Xiaomi [press release, Sept 5, 2013]

Recently announced Xiaomi Mi3 smartphone is the first to launch with advanced tactile effects

SHANGHAI & SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Immersion Corporation (Nasdaq:IMMR), the leading developer and licensor of touch feedback technology, today announced that it has entered into a broad multi-year licensing arrangement with Xiaomi, one of the fastest growing smartphone makers in China, and that the recently released Xiaomi Mi3 smartphone uses Immersion’s TouchSense® technology to add new dimension of engagement in Xiaomi’s popular MIUI interface. Users can experience Immersion technology in two new downloadable tactile themes available in the MIUI storefront, as well as the crisp, intuitive tactile effects integrated throughout the Mi3 user interface and Tool applications. The Mi3 is Xiaomi’s first smartphone to come to market under the new license agreement between Xiaomi and Immersion, which covers Immersion’s Basic Haptics IP and select TouchSense and Integrator software solutions.

“We are pleased to work closely with Xiaomi to design tactile effects that create a rich user experience and deliver a distinctive and branded feel to MIUI, Xiaomi’s custom Android interface,” explains Dennis Sheehan, Immersion’s Sr. Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “Xiaomi is our first direct mobile OEM licensee in China, and this relationship further validates the value of our IP portfolio and software solutions. With Xiaomi’s focus on design and innovation, we’re looking forward to collaborating in the future to bring advanced tactile experiences to mobile users in China.”

The Xiaomi Mi3 smartphone is available in China online at www.xiaomi.com.

Mi3 users who want to experience tactile effects have many options:

Users can select which strength of tactile effects they experience throughout the handset by customizing the vibration settings menu, found in the Settings/Sound menu

Mi3 Tool apps, including Compass, Calculator, Clock, Torch & Recorder include customized haptic effects to create a more intuitive user interface

The Iron Man and Gun MIUI themes are enhanced with realistic tactile effects, and are available for download from the MIUI Themes app.

“The Xiaomi Mi3 was designed to be easy to use, personalized and cutting-edge. The addition of haptics seamlessly extends these values to the consumer through the sense of touch,” explains Lei Jun, Chairman and CEO of Xiaomi. “Immersion’s technology and expertise allows us to create a one-of-a-kind user experience that engages the sense of touch and complements our visual and audio design.”

For more information on Immersion’s TouchSense technology and Integrator platform, visit http://www.immersion.com/markets/mobile/index.html.

About Immersion (www.immersion.com)

Founded in 1993, Immersion (NASDAQ: IMMR) is the leading innovator in haptics, or tactile effects; the company’s touch feedback solutions deliver a more compelling sense of the digital world. Using Immersion’s high-fidelity haptic systems, partners can transform user experiences with unique and customizable touch feedback effects; excite the senses in games, videos and music; restore “mechanical” feel by providing intuitive and unmistakable confirmation; improve safety by overcoming distractions while driving or performing a medical procedure; and expand usability when audio and visual feedback are ineffective. Immersion’s TouchSense technology provides haptics in mobile phone, automotive, gaming, medical and consumer electronics products from world-class companies. With over 1,300 issued or pending patents in the U.S. and other countries, Immersion helps bring the digital universe to life. Hear what we have to say at blog.immersion.com.

About Xiaomi (www.xiaomi.com)

Xiaomi is a mobile internet company dedicated to creating the ultimate user experience through its overall portfolio of products including Xiaomi phones, a series of high-performance smartphones; MIUI, a customized UI based on Android; and internet service, such as MiTalk, app store, and game center. Founded in 2010, Xiaomi is headquartered in Beijing, China and has over 3,000 employees.

Xiaomi … 2 hours ago

ON AIR [Xiaomi 2013 New Product Announcement Event]
#MIUI V5 and MiCloud Service#

Hi to all MIFans!

-What do you like the most about MIUI? What is your wish list?
Today, we have over 20 million MIUI users around the world! MIUI team works hard to deliver updates each week. Until today, we have delivered 27 updates for MIUI V5.

-MiCloud Service
More than 10.5 million registered users uploading 11 million photos daily to our MiCloud. With MiCloud service, you can sync contacts, messages, settings, photos and videos etc. to our cloud. Feel free to delete and leave enough space for your phone to do more!

-Share Photo Album and Edit Together
MIUI V5 added an amazing feature. It allows you to share photo albums and invite people to edit those albums with you. You can simply invite people through texts or generate QR codes for them to scan.

-Share Public WiFi Access
Tired of asking for password to access public WiFi? MIUI V5 allows people to share access! Just one setting or simply generate and scan a QR code, you can soon be connected.

-Send Large File
Have you experienced problems sending huge files like movies using your phone? With our MIUI V5 new system app, you can send huge files without concerns.

Xiaomi TV Eyes On – GizChina [Gizchina YouTube channel, Sept 5, 2013]

We got some eye’s on time with the new Android Xiaomi TV yesterday in Beijing. The 47-inch smart TV is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 600 chipset, features and LG/Samsung 3D display and has the narrowest borders we have seen of any TV to date!

Introducing Xiaomi MIUI MiTV (HD) 小米电视 (高清) [MrMiui YouTube channel, Sept 5, 2013], watch in either 720p or 1080p HD, and you could turn on even the 3D

Xiaomi … about an hour ago

ON AIR [Xiaomi 2013 New Product Announcement Event] Surprise! Xiaomi 47 inch 3D Smart TV Only USD$490

-47 inch Polarization 3D HD LCD from LG/Samsung;

-1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor MPQ8064 for TV , 2GB RAM /8GB flash memory ;

-TV remote with only 11 buttons, easy to use;

-Supports dual-band WiFi & Bluetooth 4.0;

-Run MIUI TV customized version, it is really smart!

Microsoft answers to the questions about Nokia devices and services acquisition: tablets, Windows downscaling, reorg effects, Windows Phone OEMs, cost rationalization, ‘One Microsoft’ empowerment, and supporting developers for an aggressive growth in market share

September 4, 2013 2:32 pm / 1 Comment on Microsoft answers to the questions about Nokia devices and services acquisition: tablets, Windows downscaling, reorg effects, Windows Phone OEMs, cost rationalization, ‘One Microsoft’ empowerment, and supporting developers for an aggressive growth in market share

Preceding analysis of the announcement materials on this blog:
Unique Nokia assets (from factories to global device distribution & sales, and the Asha sub $100 smartphone platform etc.) will now empower the One Microsoft devices and services strategy [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 3, 2013]
Other views are given here as well, after the Q&A excerpts coming immediately below. From a Reuters’ editor, an IHS senior analyst, an investment bank executive, and a business news presenter on France24 – in the form of 4 embedded videos. Those views could be summarized as “Nokia did a good deal while the success of Microsoft with this acqusition is uncertain and needs a lot of further investment”.

Let’s see how much the answers to the questions on the Microsoft Nokia Transaction Conference Call (Sept 3, 2013 ) were able to clarify the analyses and critical views:

Tablets?

STEVE BALLMER: Tablets is an area where we absolutely have our own first-party hardware, as you know, and see opportunities to continue to build and strengthen. And it’s an area where we have very strong programs in place with our OEMs, particularly on the Intel Atom-processor-based product lines that people will really get a lot of value on, and you’ll see a range of new products coming for the holiday season.

Scaling Windows down?

TERRY MYERSON: It’s definitely a priority for us to bring Windows to as many customers as we can around the world. Lower-price phones is a strategic initiative for the next Windows Phone release, but we have nothing more really to say now.

Acquisition effect on the reorg?

STEVE BALLMER: No [effect], the reorg is absolutely intact. Obviously, the devices business has a broader scale and new capability. Julie Larson-Green, who is running devices and studios is flat out. We’ve got a lot of work we’re doing here over the next several months. And Julie and her team will work on a planning and integration phase. Julie will continue. She’s excited about working on devices, but absolutely, the critical mass of the group with that acquisition is in the phone space, and Stephen Elop will run the group and will take the appropriate steps with Julie working with Stephen to figure out appropriate integrations.

Windows Phones coming from OEMs in the future?

STEVE BALLMER: Today, Nokia, as I said, is well over 80 percent of all of our phones, and I don’t foresee that changing dramatically in the short run, but as the market grows, I expect to see additional percentages, if you will, go to our OEMs, but it’s premature to predict today. We definitely have interest from OEMs in the Windows Phone opportunity given that people understand we’re going to blaze the trails here with our own first-party hardware.

Cost rationalization over time?

STEVE BALLMER: Amy will take it. I do want to highlight that in many hardware companies, manufacturing labor is primarily outsourced. And Amy can remind us the numbers, but in Nokia, there is more in-sourced manufacturing. Nokia has had a strategy about that that, obviously, they’ve executed very well. But you kind of have apples and oranges a little bit between the 32,000 and our almost 100,000. But Amy, why don’t you provide some context and detail?

AMY HOOD: Sure. Thanks, Brent. About 18,000 of those 32,000 employees are really directly a part of the manufacturing business. And so I think a better way as you think about the scale and opportunity is to really focus on the percentage of Nokia outside of that.

I think both Steve and Stephen did a thoughtful job in the execution slide about talking about the philosophy we’re using as we go through the integration process around the benefits of the incremental sales force that we’re getting with Chris and his team, as well as really going through and being thoughtful about the rationalization so that we get to one voice, one brand, one team that can best execute and be efficient.

What was not possible that the acquisition enables now, or is it only ensuring a presence in the smartphone market for a long-term basis, i.e. ‘One Microsoft’ empowerment?

STEVE BALLMER: Well, the latter is certainly true. We see at least three distinct opportunities to do better as one company than as two.

Number one, we talk about one brand and the unified voice to the market. I will say that I think we can probably do better for consumer name than the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 1020. And yet, because of where both companies are and the independent nature of the businesses, we haven’t been able to shorten that. Just take that as a proxy for a range of improvements that we feel we can make, we can simplify, the way in which we work with operators and the overall consumer branding and messaging gets much simpler. That is an efficiency of being one company.

On the innovation front, we’ve done a lot of great work together, and yet as two companies, there’s always some lines along which it’s hard to innovate. The Lumia 1020 is awesome in terms of what it has for camera and imaging, and yet I think as one company we would have doubled down on that bet and made an even greater range of software and services investments around the core hardware platform.

Third, I think we get business agility. As two companies, we’re making two independent sets of decisions about where and when and how to invest by country, by operator, by price point, and there is, let me say, an inefficiency financially as well as a lack of agility that comes with that.

So in all three of those areas, despite the fact that I think we’ve done a really good job, we can improve and accelerate quite noticeably.

How the much needed developer support for the fairly aggressive market share assumption will be ensured?

Note: the “fairly aggressive market share assumption” was presented by Microsoft as:

To which I added the following calculation and judgment in my analysis post:
15% of the 1.7B units in 2018 is 255M units. The ~$45 billion estimated revenue at that time means ~$176 ASP. Considering the latest Q2’13 EUR 157 [$207] ASP of Lumia it seems feasible, but in 5 years timeframe it needs a strong premium strategy to achieve that. … NPV – Net Present Value.

TERRY MYERSON: Well, for developers today, Windows offers an incredible opportunity with the installed base of PCs, phones, and tablets, and soon the new Xbox One. We want to offer them this opportunity to build either HTML5 applications or native applications that span all of those devices, enabling them to reach segments of users on those devices, users in an enterprise, users on a gaming console, and just provide them very unique opportunities to monetize their application investments.

So we’re pretty excited about the platforms we’re bringing to market. Developer reception in some areas is certainly better than others, but overall we’re making progress, and we know we’ve got a lot more work to do.

STEVE BALLMER: One of the keys, of course, is driving volume. We think we have differentiated products. We can tell the story a little bit better. We can get the volume up, and we have over 160,000 applications in the store. We know we have a long way to go, and the key is really offering with our own first-party applications and first-party hardware, enough reasons to buy to drive volumes and then attract the broader developer ecosystem.

Obviously, HTML5 would be kind of a neutral thing. I would expect all the major platforms to embrace it to some extent. And in some senses, it takes away a little bit of the apps barrier to entry, which we know we need to work hard on right now.

Assesment of the Xiaomi phenomenon before the global storm is starting on Sept 5

August 30, 2013 12:30 pm / 4 Comments on Assesment of the Xiaomi phenomenon before the global storm is starting on Sept 5

Follow-up: Xiaomi announcements: from Mi3 to Xiaomi TV [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 5, 2013] with detailed information links and videos about the two market leading SoCs used in Mi3:
– NVIDIA Tegra 4 with 4+1 Cortex-A15 CPU, 72 GeForce GPU and the absolutely unique Chimera™ solution for HDR (High Dynamic Range imaging) photography and video recording
– Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 with the high-end Krate 400 CPU cores and Adreno 330 GPU
(Actually the benchmark performances are roughly equal although Qualcomm needs for that a much higher frequency.)

The news came yesterday declaring not less than
A new Android chapter [Hugo Barra on Google+, Aug 29, 2013]

After nearly 5½ years at Google and almost 3 years as a member of the Android team — the most amazing group of people I’ve ever worked with in my life — I have decided to start a new career chapter.

In a few weeks, I’ll be joining the Xiaomi team in China to help them expand their incredible product portfolio and business globally — as Vice President, Xiaomi Global. I’m really looking forward to this new challenge, and am particularly excited about the opportunity to continue to help drive the Android ecosystem.

It has been an amazing ride and true honor to be part of the Android team at Google, and I especially want to thank +Andy Rubin , +Hiroshi Lockheimer , +Sundar Pichai and +Vic Gundotra for their phenomenal support and mentorship over the years.

+Android team, I will truly miss you all!

To which co-founder and president of Xiaomi Corporation Bin Lin responded on his facebook account on August 29:

I am truly grateful to have Hugo joining Xiaomi to help lead our international business.

Being Google’s VP of Product Management for Android, Hugo has a deep understanding of Xiaomi’s unique business model of building a fully compatible Android OS (aka MIUI) by embracing the openness of the internet, building top performance device with great user experience, and selling direct to consumers at substantially lower price. We’ve achieved some level of success in China market. Hugo is the best person to drive this globally.

Being ex-Googler myself, I’ve always made sure that Xiaomi shares many of the believes as Google Android. For instance, we believe in protecting the Android ecosystem and therefore our handsets have always passed Android CTS [i.e. achieving Google Play compatibility]. We believe in top performance device and eCommerce sell-direct would benefit consumers. We are committed to drive the Android ecosystem moving forward.

Welcome to Beijing, Hugo!

Last time we have seen Hugo Barra at a press event in San Francisco with
Google’s Nexus 7 goes full HD [CNETTV YouTube channel, July 24, 2014]:

The all-new HD Nexus 7 tablet is thinner and lighter than previous versions and sports an HD screen with 1,920×1,200-pixel resolution.

News were first leaked in: Android’s Hugo Barra Departs Google for China’s Xiaomi [AllThingsD, Aug 28, 2013 at 5:15 PM PT]

What’s going on? After Sundar Pichai expanded his Chrome responsibilities to Android as well, and Andy Rubin left the Android scene, so Hugo Barra became the #1 man in Google’s Android efforts, he is leaving for a much less influential Chinese maker of Android forked smartphones? What is the sense for him to have such a move?

In what follows below I will be able to give all the well justified reasons for that. Moreover, thanks to my earlier posts analyzing the Xiaomi phenomenon in all details, I will be able to convince every reader of this post in the most concise way that Hugo Barra was absolutely right about his decision to move to Xiaomi, as an even bigger thing is on the Horizon than what Google may become in the future.

Let’s start with the all-new RMB799 ($130) low-end superphone segment of Xiaomi: Xiaomi Red Rice (Hongmi) review
[a Xiaomi video on Youku via phonezilla2013 YouTube channel, Aug 21, 2013]

More information: UPDATE Aug’13: Xiaomi $130 Hongmi superphone END MediaTek MT6589 quad-core Cortex-A7 SoC with HSPA+ and TD-SCDMA is available for Android smartphones and tablets of Q1 delivery [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 12, 2012; Aug 1, 2013]

Note: Xiaomi Red Rice (Hongmi) manufacturing cost (BOM) has been estimated by TrendForce to be $84.7. See the press release, also included here in the very end of this post.

Then let’s see (note the Sept 5 warning on the illustration which is from Xiaomi itself):

Previous segments	Aug 16, 2011:	Aug 16, 2012:	April 9, 2013:
USD$326.6	Xiaomi smartphone	Xiaomi 2	Xiaomi 2S
USD$249.9		Xiaomi 1S	Xiaomi 2A

Detailed further information and market analysis:
– Xiaomi, OPPO and Meizu–top Chinese brands of smartphone innovation [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 1, 2013]
– The Upcoming Mobile Internet Superpower [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 13, 2013]

Note: Only when you read The Upcoming Mobile Internet Superpower post (not only the e-book included there) completely (i.e. with the follow-up and global analysis parts) your understanding of the all-new Xiaomi Horizon could be sufficiently complete. It is only possible to give as a teaser certain crucial facts here:
– “The broader vision of Xiaomi, Lei [the founder and CEO of Xiaomi] pointed out, is to ship more than 100 million smartphones annually for one model by 2016” that was published in China Daily back 15 months ago. With Hugo Barra now in charge of Xiaomi Global it will be easy to achieve that, even far overcome.
– There is a new (maybe final before an IPO) round of financing said to be disclosed also on Sept 5 by Xiaomi. The amount was rumored as being not less than $2B and “from Chinese internet and mobile services firm Tencent (0700.HK), with Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies (DST) acting as an intermediary”. DST already invested $90 million into Xiaomi in Dec 2011, and another $216 million in Dec 2012.
– Then, DST is controlled by Russia’s richest man Alisher Usmanov with ~20B of private wealth and an additional ~13B wealth of its two business partners also controlled by Usmanov via 100% voting rights in his USM Holdings empire. USM Holdings has three groups of assets in its portfolio: Internet (with DST and a complete Mail.Ru Goup), Telecoms (with Megafon, Russia’s second largest mobile operator in terms of revenue and subscribers and the market leader in the mobile data segment, as well as Yota, the leader of the mobile broadband sector in Russia), Media and Steel & Mining.
– Tencent is controlled by Naspers (33.9%) which also heavily invested into the Mail.Ru Group earlier (29%), and might have some minority share of DST itself, indirectly via Tencent definitely (getting not less than 10.26% of DST with a $300M investment into it in April, 2010). Although Naspers’s CEO, Koos Bekker has a personal fortune of ‘only’ $580M (mid’12, so now closer to $1B probably) but has been the unquestioned leader and decision maker of the company, which has a market capitalisation of about $57B (mid’12, now much higher). Also Tencent’s own market capitalisation is not less than $88.6B (Aug 15, 2013).
– Also, Venture Capital Dispatch reported in January this year that “DST Global counts Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and online retailer JingdongMall [pre April 2013 360buy] as part of its Asian portfolio. DST, alongside other private equity firms like Silver Lake agreed to buy shares in Alibaba at a tender offer of $1.6 billion in 2011. That same year, DST Global also participated in a $1.5 billion third round of funding in Jingdong [pre April 2013 360buy] , with media reports stating that DST bought a 5% share in the online retailer for $500 million. … DST Global spent around $1.5 billion on both of those deals, said [DST partner John] Lindfors [responsible for the Chinese market].”
(AND THE FACTS DO NOT END HERE BUT ARE GOING TO EVEN HIGHER ECHELONS OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM. GOLDMANN SACHS AND LARRY SUMMERS ARE THE MOST NOTABLE EXAMPLES. BUT DO NOT FORGET J.P. MORGAN EITHER WHICH IS HAVING A 5% OWNERSHIP OF TENCENT AS WELL. So read The Upcoming Mobile Internet Superpower post completely.)

Now an additional focus on Xiaomi’s design and user experience leadership must be emphasized here, out of all that above (the illustration below is again from Xiaomi):

Xiaomi MI2 Product 3D View [Xiaomi China YouTube channel, Aug 25, 2013]

Xiaomi Fans Festival: MIUI V5 Design Concept [MrMiui YouTube channel, April 9, 2013]

Xiaomi One Minute Show 01 Smooth MIUI [Xiaomi China YuTube channel, May 22, 2013]

A brief introduction of the brand new smooth MIUI v5.

0:04 This is our smooth MIUI v5
0:07 You can feel the smooth animation effect from every detail of MIUI v5
0:11 when switching the list in apps like Contacts or App Market
0:18 Feel the smooth switch of the background in the interface of Music
0:22 even the tiny volume icon is smoothly optimized as well
0:25 Your playlist, album photo and lyrics are perfectly combined
0:31 Switch between the camera and gallery swiftly and smoothly
0:37 When you open a photo album, you can see photos smoothly blossom on your screen
0:43 You can also have a quick and smooth slide when there are a lot of photos in your album
0:48 All the icons vibrate smoothly after reordering
0:51 We also redesigned the animation of deleting apps
0:55 You can feel the smooth animation everywhere in MIUI v5
1:00 What do you think of MIUI v5?
1:03 For more Xiaomi One Minute Show, please visit Xiaomi Community

Note: The Xiaomi community is on https://www.facebook.com/xiaomichina. The other shows are available when one click on the “YouTube” in the header (not all of them are one minute long). The “proper” One Minute Shows I found on XiaomiHK: currently 11, unfortunately all in Chinese.

There is also a MIUI community around the world which will make Barra’s job much easier. With ‘MIUI fan clubs’ – already available in 23 countries 15 months ago – the localization problem has been well solved. These fan clubs are producing MIUI ROMs for modding a range of already existing phones. And the results are quite good:
MIUI 5 on Samsung Galaxy s4 !!! (Review) [TheExilimus YouTube channel, July 28, 2013]

Note: this is why 20+ million MIUI users were indicated on the previous illustration by Xiaomi vs. 15+ million Xiaomi phone users.

Moreover, MIUI is continously evolving, and updated every Friday based on feedback from its users. The latest example (full description of the update):
MIUI ROM 3.8.30 Update Highlights [MrMiui YouTube channel, Aug 29, 2013]

1. Added the option of “Limit mobile data usage” in Browser 2. Added support for transfer of complete contact info and notes with images in Transfer … Find MIUI here (http://en.miui.com/) Facebook：https://www.facebook.com/miuiromchina Twitter： https://twitter.com/#!/miuirom Google plus: http://gplus.to/miuiofficial

Also the marketing hype generated by Xiaomi should be emphasized separately here as well. It is best demonstrated by this:
Xiaomi 2012 Conference Start Show [Xiaomi China YouTube channel, Aug 27, 2013]

What kind of company Xiaomi is, after all?
Explanation: Xiaomi CEO: Don’t call us China’s Apple [Reuters TV YouTube channel, Aug 15, 2013]

China’s Xiaomi has sparked a frenzy with a low-cost smartphone that may help the tech firm widen its lead over Apple in the local market — but CEO Lei Jun says it has very different ambitions.

Based on this interview Reuters published its news article For China’s Xiaomi, it’s what’s on the inside that counts [Aug 16, 2013] from which the following excerpts are the most relevant ones here:

Xiaomi looks a bit like Apple but is really more like Amazon with some elements of Google,” Lei said in an interview in Beijing, dressed in a blue shirt, blue jeans and brown shoes.

“The mobile phone is only the carrier,” Lei said. “Microsoft used to sell Windows in a box with a CD in it. Does that make Microsoft a paper box company?”

…

The 43 year-old chief executive said it was high time for the Apple comparisons to end and the rivalry with local tech giants Alibaba Group Holding, Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd to start.

Xiaomi currently makes around 20 million yuan ($3.27 million) a month in revenue from its mobile Internet platform, which includes a game centre, an online marketplace and a social messaging app that competes with Tencent’s popular WeChat.

In the first half, that figure was equivalent to less than 1 percent of monthly revenue, company data shows.

Lei estimated mobile Internet revenue may rise to as much as 150 million yuan [$24.41 million] a month by the end of next year as Xiaomi develops what he called its software ecosystem.

He declined to give specific details, but said Xiaomi had the hardware it needed to expand into online services.

“Xiaomi selling mobile phones is like Amazon selling Kindles,” he added.

This points quite clearly to the expansion of Xiaomi’s application (and operations) portfolio towards the e-commerce. Only this way would be possible to increase the current annualized revenue of about $40 million from the mobile Internet platform to about $300 million in just one a half year. This also means that in the long-run Xiaomi is going to be a mobile e-commerce company with affordable mobile devices offered as well, and not a premium device company, like Apple. Similarly, there are fundamental differences of the same kind from the business model of Samsung as well. Even more, this means an all-encompassing disruption of the whole industry.

Finally read this 3d party analysis:
TrendForce：Xiaomi’s New Red Rice Phone Takes China by Storm, Carries $US 85 BOM [press release, Aug 29, 2013]

(Note that Xiaomi’s own superphone segments are different as was shown above:
USD$326.6 for high-end superphones, USD$249.9 for mid-range superphones, and
?USD$130? for low-end superphones, with the latest question mark for the reason of not yet announced global prices – as the USD$130 equivalent RMB799 is China only price. Wait for Sept 5.)

According to global market research firm TrendForce, smartphone manufacturing costs are decreasing – in 2014, low-end devices that cost less than US$150 are expected to represent 14% of total smartphone shipments worldwide, up from 11% forecasted for this year. Mid-end smartphones, which cost between US$150 and US$450, are projected to account for more than 50% of shipments in 2014. Clearly, smartphone makers looking to expand their market share cannot overlook the low to mid-end sector. Fully aware of this, Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has released a Hongmi, or Red Rice, a device with decent specifications and a low price tag of RMB799 [$130].

Taking a look at Red Rice’s hardware, its MediaTek MT6589 chipset accounts for 20% of total manufacturing cost. The 4.7-inch, 312 ppi IPS display by AUO represents 22% of cost and is a significant upgrade from the 220 ppi display commonly used in similarly priced devices. Based on component cost, total manufacturing cost for the Red Rice device is estimated at US$85 (4Q”13). With a retail price of RMB799, roughly equivalent to US$130, Xiaomi is profiting at a rate difficult for other smartphone makers to keep up with.

Xiaomi is not relying on traditional sales channels for its new device but turning to Internet retailers instead – the company hopes to garner revenue from software, advertising, etc., creating a new smartphone profit model. TrendForce believes Xiaomi is able to offer Red Rice at such a low price because the maker has a solid grasp on three important points of cost control.
– First, Xiaomi usually unveils new products very early, at least a quarter before the actual release date, which gives component cost time to decrease.
– Second, Xiaomi controls inventory better than its competitors. Using an Internet pre-order sales model, Xiaomi is able to get a more exact estimation for initial production, thereby avoiding risk if sales are not as strong as expected.
– Third, by marketing via social networks, Xiaomi cuts down on advertising costs, enabling the manufacturer to continue causing a stir on the market with each new device release.

Red Rice’s groundbreaking price will inevitably have an influence on other smartphone manufacturers’ pricing strategies, especially for low to mid-end products. Currently, Xiaomi’s main market is China. The company is eagerly expanding on foreign markets as well, but results have been limited. Whether Xiaomi’s low prices will have an effect on smartphone makers in other markets will depend on the Chinese manufacturer’s foreign sales.

TrendForce believes Xiaomi’s long-term strategy includes continued expansion on the domestic market as well as breaking into foreign markets with high price-performance ratio devices. As social networking platform services and software are the company’s main sources of profit, Xiaomi will need to develop new strategies to attract consumers in foreign markets. As the company’s recently closed funding round has skyrocketed its valuation, Xiaomi is financially set to expand in foreign markets, potentially by acquiring local businesses. Or, the funds could be used to improve manufacturing and ensure timely product delivery, a notable weakness of the growing company.

Mark Zuckerberg’s personality is hyped (again) with a quite worthwhile initiative (otherwise) but with substantial global financial interests behind it as well

August 24, 2013 9:37 pm / 1 Comment on Mark Zuckerberg’s personality is hyped (again) with a quite worthwhile initiative (otherwise) but with substantial global financial interests behind it as well

The internet.org initiative for the next 5 billion people is even a bigger announcement than the Steve Ballmer’s retirement from Microsoft announcement given The Upcoming Mobile Internet Superpower [Aug 13, 2013, with extensive follow-up & ‘The global forces behind …’ analysis, later in the post, as of August 22 at 9:08pm] and the substantial global financial interests (uncovered there and) otherwise also tied to the creation of the whole global Facebook phenomenon (also indicating that Mark Zuckerberg has been just a strawman of something significantly bigger going on behind the scenes from the very beginning). Just two images which were included into the The Upcoming Mobile Internet Superpower as a reminder of that (before documenting the internet.org initiative in this post):

While the true intent of this announcement is covered by things described above, here is what was officially told to the world:

Every one of us. #ConnectTheWorld [Internet.org YouTube channel, Aug 20, 2013]

Technology leaders launch partnership to make internet access available to all [joint press release available from http://internet.org/ and number of other sources, Aug 20, 2013]

Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, Samsung to be founding partners

MENLO PARK, Calif., Aug. 20, 2013 – Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, today announced the launch of internet.org, a global partnership with the goal of making internet access available to the next 5 billion people.

“Everything Facebook has done has been about giving all people around the world the power to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it.”

Today, only 2.7 billion people – just over one-third of the world’s population – have access to the internet. Internet adoption is growing by less than 9 percent each year, which is slow considering how early we are in its development.

The goal of Internet.org is to make internet access available to the two-thirds of the world who are not yet connected and to bring the same opportunities to everyone that the connected third of the world has today.

The founding members of Internet.org –Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung – will develop joint projects, share knowledge, and mobilize industry and governments to bring the world online. These founding companies have a long history of working closely with mobile operators and expect them to play leading roles within the initiative, which over time will also include NGOs, academics and experts as well. Internet.org is influenced by the successful Open Compute Project, an industry-wide initiative that has lowered the costs of cloud computing by making hardware designs more efficient and innovative.

In order to achieve its goal of connecting the two-thirds of the world who are not yet online, Internet.org will focus on three key challenges in developing countries:

Making access affordable: Partners will collaborate to develop and adopt technologies that make mobile connectivity more affordable and decrease the cost of delivering data to people worldwide. Potential projects include collaborations to develop lower-cost, higher-quality smartphones and partnerships to more broadly deploy internet access in underserved communities. Mobile operators will play a central role in this effort by driving initiatives that benefit the entire ecosystem.

Using data more efficiently: Partners will invest in tools that dramatically reduce the amount of data required to use most apps and internet experiences. Potential projects include developing data compression tools, enhancing network capabilities to more efficiently handle data, building systems to cache data efficiently and creating frameworks for apps to reduce data usage.

Helping businesses drive access: Partners will support development of sustainable new business models and services that make it easier for people to access the internet. This includes testing new models that align incentives for mobile operators, device manufacturers, developers and other businesses to provide more affordable access than has previously been possible. Other efforts will focus on localizing services – working with operating system providers and other partners to enable more languages on mobile devices.

By reducing the cost and amount of data required for most apps and enabling new business models, Internet.org is focused on enabling the next 5 billion people to come online.

Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, Samsung and other partners will build on existing partnerships while exploring new ways to collaborate to solve these problems.

“For more than 100 years, Ericsson has been enabling communications for all and today more than 6 billion people in the world have access to mobile communications,” said Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson. “We are committed to shaping the Networked Society – where everyone and everything will be connected in real time; creating the freedom, empowerment and opportunity to transform society. We believe affordable connectivity and internet access improves people’s lives and helps build a more sustainable planet and therefore we are excited to participate in the Internet.org initiative.”

“As a world leader in mobile solutions for emerging markets having powered more than 300 million smart devices within 2 years, MediaTek whole heartedly supports the Internet.org initiative,” said MK Tsai, Chairman of MediaTek. “Global internet and social media access represent the biggest shift since the industrial revolution, and we want to make it all-inclusive.”

“Nokia is deeply passionate about connecting people – to one another and the world around them,” said Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop. “Over the years, Nokia has connected well over a billion people. Our industry is now at an exciting inflection point where internet connectivity is becoming more affordable and efficient for consumers while still offering them great experiences. Universal internet access will be the next great industrial revolution.”

“Today, more than 300 million people use Opera every month to access the internet. Tomorrow, we have a chance to serve the next 5 billion people connecting on mobile devices in developing countries. It’s in Opera’s DNA to save people time, money and data, and through Internet.org we think we can help advance these goals,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO Opera Software.

“Mobile has helped to transform many people’s lives in the emerging regions where often a computing device will be the first and only mobile experience they’ll ever have” said Paul Jacobs, chairman of the board and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. “Having shipped more than 11 billion chips, Qualcomm is a market leader that is committed to the goal of bridging the digital divide. We’re pleased to be a part of Internet.org and to be working with key ecosystem players to drive this initiative forward.”

“This new initiative has big potential to help accelerate access to the internet for everyone,” said JK Shin, CEO and President of the IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “We’re focused on delivering high quality mobile devices to ensure that the next five billion people have great mobile internet experiences.”

The Internet.org website launches today and provides an overview of the mission and goals, as well as a full list of the partners. In the coming weeks, it will feature interviews with technology leaders and experts, along with the latest news on Internet.org activities.

The embedded video on the internet.org site explains further: Mark Zuckerberg aims to put the entire world online [CNN YouTube channel, Aug 21, 2013]

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to connect five billion more people to the Internet.

adding more fuel to the campaign, as two follow-up videos on CNN channel as well:
– Zuckerberg, tech companies look for “next 5 billion… [CNN YouTube channel, Aug 21, 2013]

Facebook CEO is teaming up with tech companies to bring the web to every single person on earth. Erin Burnett reports.

– Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet plan: realistic or impossible? [CNN YouTube channel, Aug 22, 2013]

Tom Foreman examines how realistic it is for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to expand Internet access by 5 billion people.

And the leading global media was awash with extensive coverage of this as evidenced here just with the following videos:
– Mark Zuckerberg’s World-Wide Plan for the Internet [Bloomberg YouTube channel, Aug 21, 2013]

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — “Lunch Money” Host Adam Johnson reports on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s new plan to bring internet service to 5 billion people in the world currently without it.

– Mark Zuckerberg Announces Plan To Get Billions More People Online [HuffPost Live YouTube channel, Aug 21, 2013]

Facebook Inc. announced a partnership called Internet.org on Wednesday. The company says its goal is to “make Internet access available to the two-thirds of the world who are not yet connected.”

– Facebook-led project pushes for wider internet access – corporate [Euronews YouTube channel, Aug 22, 2013]

Facebook’s boss wants to make internet access affordable for the two-thirds of the world’s…

– Chinese manufacturing grows and Facebook wants to spread the internet worldwide [FRANCE 24 English YouTube channel, Aug 22, 2013]

The Facebook Internet initiative (internet.org) story is from [5:15] to [6:20]

From the participant companies we had the following corporate communications in addition to the joint press release:

Ericsson and Internet.org – providing the internet for everyone, everywhere [Aug 21, 2013]

The Networked Society will bring significant economic, social and environmental benefits to hundreds of millions of people, one of which is providing internet access to the remaining two-thirds of the planet. Today (Aug 21, 2013), Ericsson, Facebook and a number of other tech giants took a step closer to realizing these benefits through the announcement of a global initiative we call Internet.org. Through this, we aim to reduce the cost of delivering basic internet services and make them available to everyone, everywhere.

So, why is this initiative so important? In the Networked Society, connectivity is the starting point for new ways of innovating, collaborating and socializing. It’s about creating freedom, empowerment and opportunity, transforming industries and society while helping find solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing our planet.

Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, says: “For more than 100 years, Ericsson has been enabling communications for all, and today more than 6 billion people have access to mobile communications. We are committed to shaping the Networked Society – where everyone and everything will be connected in real time; creating the freedom, empowerment and opportunity to transform society. We believe affordable connectivity and internet access improves people’s lives and helps build a more sustainable planet, and therefore we are excited to participate in the Internet.org initiative.”

Some of the initial areas that are considered barriers to increasing access to the internet are the cost of smartphones, the cost of delivering data, and inefficient data-hungry applications. Cheaper phones, improved data compression techniques, and apps that use less data and reduce battery usage are some of the initial areas of investigation. Others include more efficient allocation of spectrum, edge caching, sharing hardware design, and efficiency optimization.

Ericsson has several areas of expertise to offer the initiative, including: knowledge of scale, its global presence and local expertise, and its technology leadership in the area of mobile networks and supporting service enablers.

Ericsson believes that communication is a basic human need, and fulfilling this has been our mission since the foundation of our company.

Opera helps connect the next 5 billion online [Opera News, Aug 21, 2013]

Today, only 2.7 billion people are connected to the internet. The cost of getting online is one of the biggest challenges for users worldwide. We want to help get the next five billion online.

For the last 17 years, we have built products and services to get people online. We believe in the power of sharing ideas. Opera Mini is our mobile browser that uses compression technology to save you time and money. Operators around the world have embraced Opera Mini and Opera Web Pass as the best choice for their users to get online.

WE HAVE PARTNERED WITH FACEBOOK TO GET THE NEXT 5 BILLION ONLINE

Meet Internet.org – a partnership between Facebook, Opera, and other technology companies. This is a global effort that will also involve help from local communities, non-profit organisations and experts across the world. We are proud to contribute to the project with our competence in Internet technology.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU

Are you among the few in your country who has access to the internet? Tell us how you spend your time online. How has the internet helped you? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook or byemail.

“Today, more than 300 million people use Opera every month to access the Internet.

Tomorrow, we have a chance to serve the next 5 billion people connecting on mobile devices in developing countries. It’s in Opera’s DNA to save people time, money and data, and through internet.org we think we can help advance these goals.”

— Lars Boilesen, CEO Opera Software.

Further information about the other companies’ involvement you can find in the following article also linked on the internet.org homepage:
Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access [The New York Times, Aug 20, 2013]

MENLO PARK, Calif. — About one of every seven people in the world uses Facebook. Now, Mark Zuckerberg, its co-founder and chief executive, wants to make a play for the rest — including the four billion or so who lack Internet access.

On Wednesday, Facebook announced an effort aimed at drastically cutting the cost of delivering basic Internet services on mobile phones, particularly in developing countries, where Facebook and other tech companies need to find new users. Half a dozen of the world’s tech giants, including Samsung, Nokia, Qualcomm and Ericsson, have agreed to work with the company as partners on the initiative, which they call Internet.org.

The companies intend to accomplish their goal in part by simplifying phone applications so they run more efficiently and by improving the components of phones and networks so that they transmit more data while using less battery power.

For Mr. Zuckerberg, the formation of the coalition is yet another way in which he is trying to position himself as an industry leader. He has been speaking out more forcefully than other tech executives on topics like immigration overhaul, which the industry sees as critical to its hiring needs. With Internet.org, he is laying out a philosophy that tries to pair humanitarian goals with the profit motive.

“The Internet is such an important thing for driving humanity forward, but it’s not going to build itself,” he said in a recent interview. “Ultimately, this has to make business sense on some time frame that people can get behind.”

But the effort is also a reflection of how tech companies are trying to meet Wall Street’s demands for growth by attracting customers beyond saturated markets in the United States and Europe, even if they have to help build services and some of the infrastructure in poorer, less digitally sophisticated parts of the world.

Google, for example, began a program with phone carriers last year that offers wireless users in some developing countries free access to Gmail, search and the first page clicked through from a search’s results. Google is also reaching for the sky with Project Loon, an attempt to beam Internet access down to earth from plastic balloons floating more than 11 miles in the atmosphere.

Twitter, which is preparing to offer shares to the public in an initial stock offering, has struck its own deals with about 250 cellphone companies in more than 100 countries to offer some free Twitter access, and worked to make sure its service is easy to use on even the cheapest cellphones.

These companies have little choice but to look overseas for growth. More than half of Americans already use Facebook at least once a month, for instance, and usage in the rest of the developed world is similarly heavy. There is nearly one active cellphone for every person on earth, making expansion a challenge for carriers and phone makers.

Poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America present the biggest opportunity to reach new customers — if companies can figure out how to get people there online at low cost.

The immediate goals of the new coalition are to cut the cost of providing mobile Internet services to 1 percent of its current level within five to 10 years by improving the efficiency of Internet networks and mobile phone software. The group also hopes to develop new business models that would allow phone companies to provide simple services like e-mail, search and social networks for little or no charge.

While that sounds far less exciting than, say, Google’s idea of delivering the Internet by balloon, Mr. Zuckerberg says small efforts can add up to big changes.

“No one company can really do this by itself,” he said.

Facebook is already working on techniques to reduce the average amount of data used by its Android mobile app from the current 12 megabytes a day to 1 megabyte without users noticing.

Qualcomm, whose chip technology is prevalent in advanced cellphones, has created new designs to stretch a phone’s battery life, slice the amount of data needed to transmit a video and extend the reach of mobile networks through tiny devices similar to Wi-Fi routers.

The coalition partners have also begun trying new ways of reducing the data charges paid by cellphone customers while still enabling phone makers and carriers to make money.

For example, Nokia, the Finnish cellphone maker, ran a recent experiment with Facebook and the Mexican phone carrier Telcel, in which it bundled free Facebook access with some of its Asha feature phones. Sales rose significantly, and the company decided to run similar promotions for customers of Bharti Airtel, a mobile carrier in India and Africa.

[Note that with new Nokia Asha platform, which is a full platform enhancement of the earlier Asha Touch upgrade of the legacy S40 platform, Nokia has done already the most among the internet.org founding members to achieve the now declared common challenges of Making access affordable, Using data more efficiently and Helping businesses drive access. You can check that by reading the posts behind the indicated tags on this blog.]

However, the Internet.org team does not plan to tackle some thorny infrastructure issues that are huge barriers in the developing world, particularly the long-distance transmission of data to far-flung places.

Michuki Mwangi, regional development manager for Africa at the Internet Society, a nonprofit group that has long worked to expand global Internet access, said the continent sorely lacked local interconnection points, forcing most requests for content like YouTube videos to be routed through Europe at high cost. Creating more connection points would require navigating a thicket of government interests and powerful incumbents. But at the very least, the group would like Facebook and Google to put copies of their content on a greater number of African servers to deliver it more quickly and cheaply, something that both companies say they are considering.

As with the Open Compute coalition started by Facebook in 2011 to improve the efficiency of data centers, Facebook will seek to add other partners to Internet.org, including national governments, wireless phone carriers and Microsoft, a longtime Facebook ally that has its own projects to expand access.

But Google — whose search and YouTube video products are as fundamental as Facebook’s social network to many Internet users — is likely to remain outside the group.

For one, its own efforts to expand Internet access are aggressive. In addition, the company is constantly refining its Android software, which runs the majority of new smartphones sold, to improve efficiency and battery life.

“We’re always making investments in technology and programs to help people get online,” said Courtney Hohne, a Google spokeswoman. “We have teams around the world working on products tailored to local needs.”

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft and co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, recently suggested that Project Loon and similar projects were not the best use of resources to help people in the poorest nations.

“When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no Web site that relieves that,” he said in a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.

Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged that basic health care is essential, but said that “if you can afford a phone, I think it would be really good for you to have access to the Internet.”

The potential is already obvious in places like the Philippines, where the second-largest mobile phone company, Globe Telecom, has used free Twitter, Facebook or Google access as promotions to increase the number of its 37 million users who also subscribe to a mobile data plan to 20 percent from virtually zero in two years.

“Once you’re connected, you’re connected, and you don’t want to look back,” said Peter Bithos, Globe’s senior adviser for consumer business.

For Facebook, which generates most of its revenue from selling advertising that it shows to its users, the immediate profits from expanding Internet access will be minimal, Mr. Zuckerberg said, although he acknowledged that the long-term potential was there.

“We’re focused on it more because we think it’s something good for the world,” he said, “rather than something that is going to be really amazing for our profits.”

With Android and forked Android smartphones as the industry standard Nokia relegated to a niche market status while Apple should radically alter its previous premium strategy for long term

August 17, 2013 2:55 pm / 4 Comments on With Android and forked Android smartphones as the industry standard Nokia relegated to a niche market status while Apple should radically alter its previous premium strategy for long term

Here is the chart reflecting the performance of the market-leading mobile phones upto Q2’13:

From this the most visible things are:

Android and Android-forked (Xiaomi etc.) smartphones are the undisputed industry standards to dominate the market in years to come
Both the Symbian to Windows Phone and S40 to Asha Full Touch smartphone platform transition strategies from Nokia could survive the continued Android onslaught but only in a niche market status
There is no room for Apple’s further growth, and both the platform and the company could face a gradual decline in the smartphone market

My other observations about the state of the smartphone market after Q2’13 were already presented in the following posts:

Superphones turning point: segment satured with Tier 1 globals while the Chinese locals are at less than 40% of the Samsung price [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 3, 2013] OR Samsung is leapfrogging Apple while the Chinese local brands are coming close to Samsung but at less than 40% price. Meanwhile the superphone segment of the market becomes saturated.
Xiaomi, OPPO and Meizu–top Chinese brands of smartphone innovation [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 1, 2013]
GiONEE (金立), the emerging global competitor on the smartphone market [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 22, 2013]
Eight-core MT6592 for superphones and big.LITTLE MT8135 for tablets implemented in 28nm HKMG are coming from MediaTek to further disrupt the operations of Qualcomm and Samsung [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 20-29, 2013]
China: Entry-level dual core IPS WVGA (480×800) smartphones $65+ now, quad-core $70+ in June [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 29, 2013]

In essence we came to a point when the superphone market came down in price to as low as $110 and up, while the entry-level segment of good quality came down to a $65+ price level. Also the smartphone market became saturated in all segments which brings an end to Samsung’s ability to base its premium profitability ambitions on smartphones alone (almost), as it was reflected in 20 years of Samsung “New Management” as manifested by the latest, June 20th GALAXY & ATIV innovations [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 2-26, 2013]:

… innovations in the broadest sense of the world: technology, hardware and software engineering and design, marketing in general and branding in particular etc.

Updates: Q2 record-high operating profit + smartphone worries deepen + overall business situation + nonproportionally high capex of the semiconductor business + the #2 capex beneficiary, the Display Panel Segment

These observations also led to much greater conclusions about the upcoming changes:

China is the epicenter of the mobile Internet world, so of the next-gen HTML5 web [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 5, 2013]
The Upcoming Mobile Internet Superpower [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 13, 2013]

Below I will assess the ‘Nokia Q2’13 market situation and changes’ as well as include ‘Gartner’s own assessment of the Q2’13 overall market situation and the changes’ to complete the picture.

Nokia Q2’13 market situation and changes:

Looking at the progress of Nokia Symbian to Windows Phone transformation Q2’13 was a straight continuation of the trends noted for Q1’13 in Nokia: Continued moderate progress with Lumia, urgent Asha Touch refresh and new innovations to come against the onslaught of unbranded Android and forked Android players in China and India [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 18, 2013] as you could also well observe from the chart included here as well:

Nokia was extensively discussing its Windows Phone transition in Nokia Corporation Interim Report for Q2 2013 and January-June 2013 [press release, July 18, 2013]:

Lumia Q2 volumes increased 32% quarter-on-quarter to 7.4 million units, reflecting strong demand from customers for a broadened Lumia product range.
Commenting on the second quarter results, Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, said: “ … In our Smart Devices business unit, we continue to focus on delivering meaningful differentiation to consumers around the world. We are very proud of the recent creations by our Lumia team, from the Lumia 520 – our most affordable Windows Phone 8 product which has enjoyed a strong start in markets like China, France, India, Thailand, the UK, the US and Vietnam – to the Lumia 1020, our star imaging product which we unveiled to the world last week. Overall, Lumia volumes grew to 7.4 million in the second quarter, the highest for any quarter so far and showing increasing momentum for the ecosystem. During the third quarter, we expect that our new Lumia products will drive a significant part of our Smart Devices revenue.”
In the third quarter 2013, supported by the wider availability of recently announced Lumia products as well as recently announced Mobile Phones products, Nokia expects higher Devices & Services net sales, compared to the second quarter 2013.
The year-on-year decline in our Smart Devices volumes in the second quarter 2013 continued to be driven by the strong momentum of competing smartphone platforms and our portfolio transition from Symbian products to Lumia products. The decline was primarily due to lower Symbian volumes, partially offset by higher Lumia volumes. Our Symbian volumes decreased from 6 million units in the second quarter 2012 to approximately zero in the second quarter 2013. Our Lumia volumes increased from 4.0 million in the second quarter 2012 to 7.4 million in the second quarter 2013.
On a sequential basis, the increase in our Smart Devices volumes in the second quarter 2013 was due to higher Lumia volumes, as we started shipping the Lumia 520 and 720 in significant volumes. In the second quarter 2013, the vast majority of Smart Devices volumes were from Windows Phone 8-based Lumia products.
The year-on-year increase in our Smart Devices ASP in the second quarter 2013 was primarily due to a positive mix shift towards sales of our Lumia products which carry a higher ASP than our Symbian products, partially offset by our pricing actions. Sequentially, the decrease in our Smart Devices ASP in the second quarter 2013 was primarily due to a negative mix shift towards sales of our lower priced Windows Phone 8-based Lumia products as well as our pricing actions.
Nokia announced and started shipments in select markets of the Nokia Lumia 925, a new interpretation of its award-winning flagship, the Nokia Lumia 920. The Nokia Lumia 925 introduces metal for the first time to the Nokia Lumia range and includes the most advanced lens technology and next-generation imaging software to capture clearer and sharper pictures and video even in low light conditions. The Nokia Lumia 925 offers a variety of exclusive services such as Nokia Music for unlimited streaming of free playlists, integrated HERE services, and the option to add wireless charging with a snap-on wireless charging cover.
Nokia announced the Nokia Lumia 928 smartphone, exclusive to Verizon Wireless. With a 8.7MP camera and Nokia’s PureView imaging innovation, the Nokia Lumia 928 delivers superior imaging and video performance that enables people to capture bright, blur free photos and videos, even in low light conditions. The sleek and stylish smartphone comes with the latest high-end Nokia Lumia experiences, including Nokia Music, HERE services, and built-in wireless charging.
Nokia started shipping in volumes the Nokia Lumia 520, its most affordable Windows Phone 8 smartphone, delivering experiences normally found only in high-end smartphones, such as the same digital camera lenses found on the Nokia Lumia 920, Nokia Music for free music out of the box and even offline, and HERE services.
Nokia’s Lumia range of smartphones continued to attract businesses, including Miele & Cie. KG, a global leader in domestic appliances and commercial machinery, which has chosen the Nokia Lumia range as the smartphone of choice for its global employees.
The Windows Phone Store continued to strengthen in terms of the quantity and quality of applications. The Windows Phone Store today offers more than 165 000 applications and games.

The Q2’13-related improvements mentioned above and influencing the below chart were even more extensively discussed in my earlier posts:

High-volume Nokia Lumia superphones with Windows Phone 8 extended on the top for China, and on the entry level needed for Asia and Middle-East as well UPDATE: at even lower price by 27% [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 5, 2012 – March 21, 2013] Note that the Lumia 520 W-CDMA mentioned there for ¥ 1299.00 [$209] is now (Aug 17) ¥ 899.00 [$147] while in India it is even lower priced at Rs 7,667+ [$124+]
Nokia’s expanded, new risks and uncertainties for its Windows Phone strategy for 2013 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, March 17, 2013]

while the Q3’13-related actions of improvements in these posts:

Nokia Lumia 1020: an excellent case of Nokia’s contribution to Microsoft as a key innovation partner [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 12, 2013]
Minutes of a high-octane but also expert evangelist CEO: Stephen Elop, Nokia [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 12, 2013]

Now look again at the performance chart for the reflections:

From the further decline of Asha Full Touch you could see that the Temporary Nokia setback in India [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 28, 2013] continued into the Q2’13 as well as the result of entry-level local brand Android smartphones being in heavy price competition with Nokia Asha Full Touch during Q2 while having superior hardware specifications. Even Samsung’s REX 70 competed in price with Asha Full Touch.

Nokia was talking in his Nokia Corporation Interim Report for Q2 2013 and January-June 2013 [press release, July 18, 2013] only about the following future-oriented actions that were introduced in Q2 in order to remedy this situation:

In Devices & Services, our Mobile Phones business unit started to demonstrate some signs of recovery in the latter part of the second quarter following a difficult start to the year. Also, towards the end of the second quarter, we started to ship the Asha 501, which brings a new design and user experience to the highly competitive sub-100 USD market. While we are very encouraged by the consumer response to our innovations in this price category, our Mobile Phones business unit is planning to take actions to focus its product offering and improve product competitiveness.

On a year-on-year basis, our Mobile Phones volumes in the second quarter 2013 were negatively affected by competitive industry dynamics, including intense smartphone competition at increasingly lower price points and intense competition at the low end of our product portfolio. Compared to the second quarter 2012, our Mobile Phones volumes declined across our portfolio, most notably for our non-full-touch devices that we sell to our customers for above EUR 30, partially offset by higher sales volumes of Asha full-touch smartphones.

Nokia started production at its new manufacturing facility in Hanoi, Vietnam. The new site has been established to produce our most affordable Asha smartphones and feature phones.

Nokia announced and started shipments of the Nokia Asha 501, the first of a new generation of smartphones to run on the new Asha platform. Retailing at a suggested price of USD 99, the Nokia Asha 501 offers users affordable smartphone design with bold color, a high-quality build and an innovative user interface. The new Asha platform also allows developers who write applications for the Nokia Asha 501 to reach all smartphones based on the new Asha platform without having to re-write code.

These things were already extensively discussed in my earlier posts:

Nokia’s non-Windows crossroad [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, May 2, 2013]
New Asha platform and ecosystem to deliver a breakthrough category of affordable smartphone from Nokia [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, May 9, 2013] my composite post of the all relevant launch information
New Nokia Asha platform for developers [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, May 9, 2013] my composite post of the all relevant development platform information
Nokia becoming the next Samsung from its new Vietnamese manufacturing base? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 24, 2013]

And here is how Gartner was assessing the Q2’13 overall market situation and the changes:

Gartner Says Smartphone Sales Grew 46.5 Percent in Second Quarter of 2013 and Exceeded Feature Phone Sales for First Time [press release, Aug 14, 2013]

Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Grew 3.6 Percent in Second Quarter of 2013

Microsoft Has Become the No. 3 Smartphone OS Overtaking BlackBerry

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totaled 435 million units in the second quarter of 2013, an increase of 3.6 percent from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide smartphone sales to end users reached 225 million units, up 46.5 percent from the second quarter of 2012. Sales of feature phones to end users totaled 210 million units and declined 21 percent year-over-year.

“Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe exhibited the highest smartphone growth rates of 74.1 percent, 55.7 percent and 31.6 percent respectively, as smartphone sales grew in all regions.

Samsung maintained the No. 1 position in the global smartphone market, as its share of smartphone sales reached 31.7 percent, up from 29.7 percent in the second quarter of 2012 (see Table 1). Apple’s smartphone sales reached 32 million units in the second quarter of 2013, up 10.2 percent from a year ago.

Table 1

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2Q13 (Thousands of Units)

Company

2Q13 Units

2Q13 Market Share (%)

2Q12 Units

2Q12 Market Share (%)

Samsung

71,380.9

31.7

45,603.8

29.7

Apple

31,899.7

14.2

28,935.0

18.8

LG Electronics

11,473.0

5.1

5,827.8

3.8

Lenovo

10,671.4

4.7

4,370.9

2.8

ZTE

9,687.6

4.3

6,331.4

4.1

Others

90,213.6

40.0

62,704.0

40.8

Total

225,326.2

100.0

153,772.9

100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2013)

In the smartphone operating system (OS) market (see Table 2), Microsoft took over BlackBerry for the first time, taking the No. 3 spot with 3.3 percent market share in the second quarter of 2013. “While Microsoft has managed to increase share and volume in the quarter, Microsoft should continue to focus on growing interest from app developers to help grow its appeal among users,” said Mr. Gupta. Android continued to increase its lead, garnering 79 percent of the market in the second quarter.

Table 2

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2Q13 (Thousands of Units)

Operating System

2Q13 Units

2Q13 Market Share (%)

2Q12 Units

2Q12 Market Share (%)

Android

177,898.2

79.0

98,664.0

64.2

iOS

31,899.7

14.2

28,935.0

18.8

Microsoft

7,407.6

3.3

4,039.1

2.6

BlackBerry

6,180.0

2.7

7,991.2

5.2

Bada

838.2

0.4

4,208.8

2.7

Symbian

630.8

0.3

9,071.5

5.9

Others

471.7

0.2

863.3

0.6

Total

225,326.2

100.0

153,772.9

100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2013)

Mobile Phone Vendor Perspective

Samsung: Samsung remained in the No. 1 position in the overall mobile phone market, with sales to end users growing 19 percent in the second quarter of 2013 (see Table 3). “We see demand in the premium smartphone market come mainly from the lower end of this segment in the $400-and-below ASP mark. It will be critical for Samsung to step up its game in the mid-tier and also be more aggressive in emerging markets. Innovation cannot be limited to the high end,” said Mr. Gupta.

Nokia: Slowing demand of feature phone sales across many markets worldwide, and fierce competition in the smartphone segment, affected Nokia’s mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013. Nokia’s mobile phone sales totaled 61 million units, down from 83 million units a year ago. Nokia’s Lumia sales grew 112.7 percent in the second quarter of 2013 thanks to its expanded Lumia portfolio, which now include Lumia 520 and Lumia 720. “With the recent announcement of the Lumia 1020, Nokia has built a wide portfolio of devices at multiple price points, which should boost Lumia sales in the second half of 2013,” said Mr. Gupta. “However, Nokia is facing tough competition from Android devices, especially from regional and Chinese manufacturers which are more aggressive in terms of price points.”

Apple: While sales continued to grow, the company faced a significant drop in the ASP of its smartphones. Despite the iPhone 5 being the most popular model, its ASP declined to the lowest figure registered by Apple since the iPhone’s launch in 2007. The ASP reduction is due to strong sales of the iPhone 4, which is sold at a strongly discounted price. “While Apple’s ASP demonstrates the need for a new flagship model, it is risky for Apple to introduce a new lower-priced model too,” said Mr. Gupta. “Although the possible new lower-priced device may be priced similarly to the iPhone 4 at $300 to $400, the potential for cannibalization will be much greater than what is seen today with the iPhone 4. Despite being seen as the less expensive sibling of the flagship product, it would represent a new device with the hype of the marketing associated with it.”

Lenovo: Lenovo’s mobile phone sales grew 60.6 percent to reach 11 million units in the second quarter of 2013. Lenovo’s quarter performance was bolstered by smartphone sales. Its smartphone sales grew 144 percent year-over-year and helped it rise to the No. 4 spot in the worldwide smartphone market for the first time. Lenovo continues to rely heavily on its home market in China, which represents more than 95 percent of its sales. It remains challenging for Lenovo to expand outside China as it has to strengthen its direct channel as well as its relationships with communications service providers.

Table 3

Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2Q13 (Thousands of Units)

Company

2Q13 Units

2Q13 Market Share (%)

2Q12 Units

2Q12 Market Share (%)

Samsung

107,526.0

24.7

90,432.1

21.5

Nokia

60,953.7

14.0

83,420.1

19.9

Apple

31,899.7

7.3

28,935.0

6.9

LG Electronics

17,016.4

3.9

14,345.4

3.4

ZTE

15,280.7

3.5

17,198.2

4.1

Huawei

11,275.1

2.6

10,894.2

2.6

Lenovo

10,954.8

2.5

6,821.7

1.6

TCL Communi-cation [Alcatel]

10,134.3

2.3

9,355.7

2.2

Sony Mobile Communications

9,504.7

2.2

7,346.8

1.7

Yulong [Coolpad]

7,911.5

1.8

4,016.2

1.0

Others

152,701.5

35.1

147,354.60

35.1

Total

435,158.4

100.0

420,120.0

100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2013)

“With second quarter of 2013 sales broadly on track, we see little need to adjust our expectations for worldwide mobile phone sales forecast to total 1.82 billion units this year. Flagship devices brought to market in time for the holidays, and the continued price reduction of smartphones will drive consumer adoption in the second half of the year,” said Mr. Gupta.

Additional information is in the Gartner report “Market Share Analysis: Mobile Phones, Worldwide, 2Q13.” The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/document/2573119.

Company	2Q13 Units	2Q13 Market Share (%)	2Q12 Units	2Q12 Market Share (%)
Samsung	71,380.9	31.7	45,603.8	29.7
Apple	31,899.7	14.2	28,935.0	18.8
LG Electronics	11,473.0	5.1	5,827.8	3.8
Lenovo	10,671.4	4.7	4,370.9	2.8
ZTE	9,687.6	4.3	6,331.4	4.1
Others	90,213.6	40.0	62,704.0	40.8
Total	225,326.2	100.0	153,772.9	100.0

Operating System	2Q13 Units	2Q13 Market Share (%)	2Q12 Units	2Q12 Market Share (%)
Android	177,898.2	79.0	98,664.0	64.2
iOS	31,899.7	14.2	28,935.0	18.8
Microsoft	7,407.6	3.3	4,039.1	2.6
BlackBerry	6,180.0	2.7	7,991.2	5.2
Bada	838.2	0.4	4,208.8	2.7
Symbian	630.8	0.3	9,071.5	5.9
Others	471.7	0.2	863.3	0.6
Total	225,326.2	100.0	153,772.9	100.0

Experiencing the Cloud

Category Archives: consumer computing

The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years

Commenting on recent events in the PC industry at a recent media conference, Acer founder Stan Shih said that the Wintel camp is destined to fail since the two giants have been keeping most of the profits to themselves, which is indirectly pushing many players to Google’s ecosystem.

Since Wintel’s business strategies can no longer create profits for partners, many downstream IT players have turned to other ecosystems to seek profitability, noted Shih, adding that Google’s open platform strategy is not the main attraction prompting IT players to join the Google camp.

Linux is also an open platform, but this has not helped it receive similar attention, Shih noted. For an ecosystem to have a chance of growing and staying strong, it must have leadership adopting strategies that allow all partners to earn profits.

Shih pointed out that Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia will be the right decision if the cooperation creates value for the companies, shareholders, consumers and partners.

In the past, Taiwan-based enterprises have not placed much focus on the software and service industries, ignoring the importance of strengthening design capabilities and related intangible outputs.

Shih believes Taiwan will need to put more investment into design innovation (arts, software and technologies), in order to change the current status.

Velvárt András Re: “mi a fenének vannak ARM-os Windows-ok?”

Szoftveres szemmel merül csak fel a kédés. Hardveres szemüveggel, ami egyébként elsődleges ebben a tekintetben, ilyen kérdés egyszerűen értelmetlen.

The future of the semiconductor IP ecosystem:

https://lazure2.wordpress.com/…/

Ez persze még a mostani Bay Trail-T elemző összegzésnél is, mondjuk egy nagyságrenddel összetettebb olvasmány.

An ARM-focussed Microsoft spin-off could be the only solution to save Microsoft in the crucial next 3-years period [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 24, 2013]

The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs?

From ASUS Transforms Expectations for Mobile Computing with New Transformer Books at IDF 2013 [press release, Sept 12, 2013]:

“The ASUS Transformer Book T100 is the perfect transformation of the Eee PC with full compatibility, detachable touch screen, immersive entertainment and enough battery for all-day computing,” said ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih. “It is truly a game-changer for our mobile lifestyle.”

Transformer Book T100— high-mobility notebook and tablet combined

In retrospective: ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 17, 2012]

#5 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture, Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

#47 slide of the same SPCS004 presentation as above

Are you aware of $32 entry-level Android tablets available for local resellers around the world? Are you aware that this is the price of Intel’s upcoming in October 2013 Bay Trail-T Z3740 SoC, i.e. a chip only?

#52 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture, Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

#49 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture, Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

Intel HD Graphics architecture– Graphics turbo supported with CPU-GPU power sharing– DirextX 11, OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics core– Support for high-resolution displays (up to 25×16)– Programmable in-order multi-threaded– 4EUs, 8 threads each, SIMD32– >= 667MHz

High-quality, high-performance, low power HD H.264 encoder– High profile support, fast transcode– Separate 3D and media power wells– Video and display post-processing support

Power– Autonomously hardware detects Idle condition, save state and power gate– Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling

#9 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture, Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

And having said this, we have the capabilities, and we know the secret sauce on matchmaking: this stunning architecture and this very advanced process technology manufacturing. That is what I call in that slide here magic. This is our secret sauce. And this is what, exactly what we have done.

And all that leads me to today’s announcement, the introduction of the Bay Trail platform.

Intel Executives and Developers talk about Bay Trail, the Newest Intel Atom Processor 22 nanometer, quad-core system-on-a-chip technology Intel Bay Trail the Newest Intel Atom Processor Tech News Interviews.

The flexibility of the new microarchitecture allows for variants of the SoC to serve multiple market segments, including new Intel® Pentium® and Celeron® processors (“Bay Trail”-M and -D) for entry 2 in 1s, laptops, desktops and all-in-one systems.

Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series (“Bay Trail-T“) … over 10 hours of active battery life22 Battery life is measured 1080p,10″, 31Whr 13×7 OEM System; FFRD on 38.5 Whr 25×14, 10Mbps h.264 Elephants Dream video. Windows 8 only.

The “Bay Trail M” line … two times faster performance in productivity applications and up to three times improvement in graphics compared to 2-year-old Intel-based value notebooks3

Are you aware of $32 entry-level Android tablets available for local resellers around the world? Are you aware that this is the price of Intel’s upcoming in October 2013 Bay Trail-T Z3740 SoC, i.e. a chip only?

Introducing the next generation Intel® Atom™ Processor (Code named “Bay Trail”)

Abstract

Comparison of Clover Trail vs Bay Trail features

First-ever 22-nm Intel Atom processor

The new first-ever, 22-nm Intel Atom processor is a quad-core system on chip (SOC) with 4 cores/4 threads. With the CPU, graphics, and memory in one package, this modular design provides the flexibility to package a high-performance processor and graphics solution for multiple form factors.

Enhanced battery life

The new processor offers active battery life of more than 10 hours and standby performance of approximately 30 days3.

Graphics and Media Performance

Intel Burst Technology 2.0

Automatically allows processor cores to run faster than the base operating frequency if they’re operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits.

Graphics Feature Comparison

Advanced Imaging and video

Security Features

New business-class tablets built with the Intel Atom processor Z3700 Series are specifically designed for the needs of business and the enterprise. Hardware-enhanced Intel® security technologies and support for software from McAfee offer robust security capabilities.

Intel® Wireless Display benefits on Intel Atom processor

Intel® WiDi enables content-protected HD streaming and interactive usages between tablets and TVs. It supports full 1080p video and low latency gaming, and is Miracast compliant Intel® WiDi can be used to link health indicators as well. A few of the capabilities of Miracast-enabled apps are:

Resources for Developers

Below are links to some resources for programming on Windows 8 that can help you take advantage of the new Intel Atom processor features.

3 Based on a 30W Hour battery on 19×10 resolution on 10.1” display. Higher resolution will require larger battery. Active use measured as 1080/30 fps local video playback. Battery life may differ based on SKU and SoC performance.

1. Based on TouchXPRT*, WebXPRT*, and SYSmark* 2012 Lite compared to Intel® Atom™ processor Z2560. Individual results will vary.

5. Measured using 3DMark* Ice Storm, a 3-D graphics benchmark that measures 3-D gaming performance. Find out more at http://www.futuremark.com.

6. Display resolution is an OEM feature selection. Consult your system manufacturer for more details.

In retrospective: ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 17, 2012]

I am really excited to be here at the Bay Trail launch to talk about some of the new platforms that Dell can actually innovate from some of the Bay Trail technologies that Intel is bringing out.

And what I want to show you today is, firstly, one of our new Windows 8 eight-inch tablets we’ll be introducing very soon. This system is part of a new family that we’re introducing that are going to really innovate and drive new capabilities into very small new form factors.

The whole family will offer several key benefits.

Firstly, quality, quality Dell is renowned for, products that last a long time but have great performance on the screen and usability. Secondly, battery life. Anybody worry about range anxiety? Am I going to be able to turn it on and be able to use it? This really fixes that.

Security, making sure you’re connecting to a business, or you’re connecting to your home. That data is secure in transit and on the device.

And lastly, to make sure that there is connectivity, a range of 4G and LTE connectivity, so wherever you happen to be, you’ll be able to connect to the wells.

So great features in the products. But more importantly, we think, is actually being able to have fun and easy to-use products.

So with this introduction, I’m actually pleased to announce here at IDF that we’ll be branding our new family of tablets, Venue, the Dell Venue family. Venue means the place where things happen. And to us, this really is the place that things happen and becomes the center of the universe.

So you can actually carry your entire life with you, connect back, use Dell pocket clouds to be able to access content, be able to use your files and applications wherever you happen to be, really excited about them.

And October 2 in New York City, we’ll be announcing the entire range of products.

The new Air Command S Pen User Experience making the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phablet, and Galaxy Note 10.1, 2014 Edition tablet next-generation devices

(Note: for hardware specification go to Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing and GPU Compute is the hidden gem in the Galaxy Note 3 and GALAXY Note 10.1, 2014 Edition, launched at ‘Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2’ event [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013].)

The GALAXY Note 3 also features a textured back cover and delicate stitching that delivers a premium look and feel.

Air Command, a palette of features and commands which you can activate on any screen simply by hovering and clicking the S Pen button, lets you access useful features for everyday tasks such as Action Memo, Scrapbook, and S Finder.

For more information : http://www.samsung.com/galaxynote3

(Note: for hardware specification go to Samsung Exynos 5 Octa with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing and GPU Compute is the hidden gem in the Galaxy Note 3 and GALAXY Note 10.1, 2014 Edition, launched at ‘Samsung UNPACKED 2013 Episode 2’ event [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013].)

Companion Device Computing as envisaged and implemented by Pranav Mistry and his TTT team from Samsung: the case of Galaxy Gear + Galaxy Note 3

See also the The new Air Command S Pen User Experience making the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phablet, and Galaxy Note 10.1, 2014 Edition tablet next-generation devices [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 12, 2013] post for another aspect of the advancement of the state-of-the-art.

Samsung GALAXY experience is now extended through GALAXY Gear

… <continued at the Samsung Tomorrow blog entry below>

From the hardware design and specifications to making your everyday tasks easier and faster, we go hands-on with the new Samsung GALAXY Note 3 and the GALAXY Gear.

In retrospective:
ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 17, 2012]

#5 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

#52 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

#49 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

Intel HD Graphics architecture
– Graphics turbo supported with CPU-GPU power sharing
– DirextX 11, OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics core
– Support for high-resolution displays (up to 25×16)
– Programmable in-order multi-threaded
– 4EUs, 8 threads each, SIMD32
– >= 667MHz

High-quality, high-performance, low power HD H.264 encoder
– High profile support, fast transcode
– Separate 3D and media power wells
– Video and display post-processing support

Power
– Autonomously hardware detects Idle condition, save state and power gate
– Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling

#9 slide of SPCS004 – Technology Insight: Intel® Platform for Tablets, Code Name Bay Trail-T
by Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar – Intel Fellow, Director, Platform Architecture,
Mobile & Communications Group, Intel Corporation

Intel® Atom™ Z3000 Processor Series (“Bay Trail-T“) … over 10 hours of active battery life²2 Battery life is measured 1080p,10″, 31Whr 13×7 OEM System; FFRD on 38.5 Whr 25×14, 10Mbps h.264 Elephants Dream video. Windows 8 only.

The “Bay Trail M” line … two times faster performance in productivity applications and up to three times improvement in graphics compared to 2-year-old Intel-based value notebooks³

Introducing the next generation Intel® Atom™ Processor
(Code named “Bay Trail”)

The new processor offers active battery life of more than 10 hours and standby performance of approximately 30 days³.

³ Based on a 30W Hour battery on 19×10 resolution on 10.1” display. Higher resolution will require larger battery. Active use measured as 1080/30 fps local video playback. Battery life may differ based on SKU and SoC performance.

1. Based on TouchXPRT, WebXPRT, and SYSmark* 2012 Lite compared to Intel® Atom™ processor Z2560. Individual results will vary.

In retrospective:
ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 17, 2012]