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The future is here: Yes, it is Microsoft Surface 2 with modern apps only! (And ARM, not x86/x64!)

November 17, 2013 3:59 pm / Leave a comment

This video is speaking for itself (and for the title): Why I Love my Microsoft Surface 2 : Tips and Tricks [Sean Ong YouTube channel, Nov 3, 2013]

In this video I show off my favorite features in the Microsoft Surface 2, with windows 8.1 RT. I show off voice control (windows speech recognition), multiple monitor support, and a variety of accessories via USB hub (including external hard drive, mouse, keyboard, and Xbox 360 controller integration). I show how I connect the Surface 2 to my HDTV as well as wireless casting of music and video! I also go through some other features, such as Spotify web player, and icloud web. Also kid friendly applications and multiple accounts. There’s so much stuff this thing can do, it will blow your mind away

That is how Sean Ong, a senior consultant at Navigant (focussing there on “technical, economic, and policy analysis of energy efficiency and renewable energy systems”) and himself an energy analysis engineer, was able to present the above, truly incredible customer value from current and especially future point of view for Windows 8.1 in geneneral and Surface 2 (ARM based) in particular. It is even more remarkable as nobody, I REPEAT NOBODY, from Microsoft worldwide could do that. I know even a highly professional, true world class Windows 8/Windows 8.1 expert who was not only fascinated himself by the above video, but acknowledged honestly that he was unaware of the speech recognition progress in Windows 8.1. And we are talking about an internal expert who has already been involved in the internal expert network of similar, most devoted Microsoft specialists in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 for years.

For me this video is incredibly important because:

NOT ONLY FOR THE FUTURE OF MICROSOFT BUT FOR THE WHOLE STATE OF COMPUTING
AS THE MISSING COMMUNICATIONS FROM MICROSOFT, EVEN THE TOTAL INABILITY OF MICROSOFT TO COMMUNICATE THE INHERENT WINDOWS 8.1/SURFACE 2 VALUES, WERE CLEARLY POINTING TO TOTAL LACK OF MARKETING COMPETENCY FOR ITS GAME-CHANGING, MICROSOFT-ONLY, POST PC AREA INNOVATIONS INHERENT IN WINDOWS 8.1/SURFACE 2

Although these signs (both the positive and negative ones) were coupled with a number of competitive positive changes for Microsoft, such as:

But a number of competitive negative changes for Microsoft became even more worrisome (than any time before) lately, such as:

Fortunately we already know:

Board of directors initiates succession process; Ballmer remains CEO until successor is named.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer has decided to retire as CEO within the next 12 months, upon the completion of a process to choose his successor. In the meantime, Ballmer will continue as CEO and will lead Microsoft through the next steps of its transformation to a devices and services company that empowers people for the activities they value most.
“There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time,” Ballmer said. “We have embarked on a new strategy with a new organization and we have an amazing Senior Leadership Team. My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction.”
The Board of Directors has appointed a special committee to direct the process. This committee is chaired by John Thompson, the board’s lead independent director, and includes Chairman of the Board Bill Gates, Chairman of the Audit Committee Chuck Noski and Chairman of the Compensation Committee Steve Luczo. The special committee is working with Heidrick & Struggles International Inc., a leading executive recruiting firm, and will consider both external and internal candidates.
“The board is committed to the effective transformation of Microsoft to a successful devices and services company,” Thompson said. “As this work continues, we are focused on selecting a new CEO to work with the company’s senior leadership team to chart the company’s course and execute on it in a highly competitive industry.”
“As a member of the succession planning committee, I’ll work closely with the other members of the board to identify a great new CEO,” said Gates. “We’re fortunate to have Steve in his role until the new CEO assumes these duties.”
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has always been a speaker and performer like no other — his absolute enthusiasm for his company is electric in person, turning ordinary corporate events into raw displays of emotion that are often criticized but never forgotten. Read more at The Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/27/4779036/exclusive-video-steve-ballmers-intense-tearful-goodbye-to-microsoft
Steve Ballmer paced his corner office on a foggy January morning here, listening through loudspeakers to his directors’ voices on a call that would set in motion the end of his 13-year reign as Microsoft Corp.’s MSFT -0.47% chief executive.
Microsoft lagged behind Apple Inc. AAPL -0.60% and Google Inc. GOOG -0.16% in important consumer markets, despite its formidable software revenue. Mr. Ballmer tried to spell out his plan to remake Microsoft, but a director cut him off, telling him he was moving too slowly.
“Hey, dude, let’s get on with it,” lead director John Thompson says he told him. “We’re in suspended animation.” Mr. Ballmer says he replied that he could move faster.
But the contentious call put him on a difficult journey toward his August decision to retire, sending Microsoft into further tumult as it began seeking a successor to a man who has been at its heart for 33 years.
“Maybe I’m an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on,” the 57-year-old Mr. Ballmer says, pausing as his eyes well up. “As much as I love everything about what I’m doing,” he says, “the best way for Microsoft to enter a new era is a new leader who will accelerate change.”
Mr. Ballmer, in a series of exclusive interviews tinged with his characteristic bluster and wistfulness, tells of how he came to believe that he couldn’t lead Microsoft forward—that, in fact, Microsoft would not be led by him because of the very corporate culture he had helped instill.
Mr. Ballmer and his board have been in agreement: Microsoft, while maintaining its strong software business, must shake up its management structure and refocus on mobile devices and online services if it is to find future profit growth and reduce its dependence on the fading PC market.
The board’s beef was speed. The directors “didn’t push Steve to step down,” says Mr. Thompson, a longtime technology executive who heads the board’s CEO-search committee, “but we were pushing him damn hard to go faster.”
Investors, too, were pushing for transformation. “At this critical juncture, Wall Street wants new blood to bring fundamental change,” says Brent Thill, a longtime Microsoft analyst at UBS AG. “Steve was a phenomenal leader who racked up profits and market share in the commercial business, but the new CEO must innovate in areas Steve missed—phone, tablet, Internet services, even wearables.”
The Microsoft board’s list of possible successors includes, among others, former Nokia Corp. NOK1V.HE +0.25% CEO Stephen Elop, Microsoft enterprise-software chief Satya Nadella and Ford Motor Co. F -0.12% CEO Alan Mulally, say people familiar with the search. In conjunction with Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting Nov. 19, the board plans to meet and will discuss succession, says a person familiar with the schedule.
Representatives for Mr. Elop and Mr. Nadella say the men have no comment on the search. A Ford spokesman says “nothing has changed” since November 2012, when Ford said Mr. Mulally would remain CEO through at least 2014, adding: “Alan remains absolutely focused on continuing to make progress on our One Ford plan. We do not engage in speculation.”
Microsoft’s next chief will be only the third in its history. Mr. Ballmer joined in 1980 at the suggestion of his Harvard University pal, co-founder Bill Gates, and is its second-largest individual shareholder and a billionaire.
After growing up in Detroit, where his father was a Ford manager, Mr. Ballmer roomed down the hall from Mr. Gates at Harvard. He dropped his Stanford M.B.A. studies to become Microsoft’s first business manager.
He was Mr. Gates’s right-hand man, helping turn Microsoft into a force that redefined how the world used computers. He took the reins in 2000, further solidifying Microsoft’s position in software markets and keeping the profit engine humming. Revenue tripled during his tenure to almost $78 billion in the year ended this June, and profit grew 132% to nearly $22 billion.
But while profit rolled in from Microsoft’s traditional markets, it missed epic changes, including Web-search advertising and the consumer shift to mobile devices and social media.
Last year, Mr. Ballmer sought to reboot. In an October shareholder letter, he declared Microsoft would become a provider of “devices and services” for businesses and individuals.
He told the board he wanted to lead the charge and remain until his youngest son graduated from high school in four years. He began his own succession planning by meeting potential candidates in what he calls “cloak-and-dagger” meetings.
Mr. Ballmer’s reboot plan required a corporate overhaul. For guidance, he called his longtime friend, Ford’s Mr. Mulally, once a top Boeing Co. BA +0.73% executive. They met Christmas Eve at a Starbucks on Mercer Island near Seattle.
Mr. Ballmer brought a messenger bag, pulling out onto a table an array of phones and tablets from Microsoft and competitors. He asked Mr. Mulally how he turned around Ford. For four hours, he says, Mr. Mulally detailed how teamwork and simplifying the Ford brand helped him reposition it.
The Ford spokesman says: “Ford and Microsoft have a long-standing business partnership, and many of our leaders discuss business together frequently.”
It was a wake-up call for Mr. Ballmer, who had run the software giant with bravado and concedes that “I’m big, I’m bald and I’m loud.”
Microsoft’s culture included corporate silos where colleagues were often pitted against one another—a competitive milieu that spurred innovation during Microsoft’s heyday but now sometimes leaves groups focused on their own legacies and bottom lines rather than on the big technology picture and Microsoft as a whole.
He recalls thinking: “I’ll remake my whole playbook. I’ll remake my whole brand.”
The board liked his new plan. But as Mr. Ballmer prepared to implement it, his directors on the January conference call demanded he expedite it.
Pushing hardest, say participants, were Mr. Thompson, who had held top jobs at International Business Machines Corp. IBM +0.54% and Symantec Corp. SYMC +0.38%, and Stephen Luczo, CEO of Seagate Technology STX -2.33% PLC. Mr. Luczo declines to comment.
“But, I didn’t want to shift gears until I shipped Windows,” Mr. Ballmer says he told the directors on the call, explaining that he hadn’t moved faster in late 2012 because he was focused on releasing in October the next generation of Windows, Microsoft’s longtime cash cow.
Mr. Ballmer swung into gear, drafting a management-reorganization plan to discuss during a March retreat at a Washington mountain resort. He invited Mr. Thompson and another director, to get board perspective on his plan.
Instead, he got more pressure. Mr. Thompson says he told Mr. Ballmer and his executives: “Either get on the bus or get off.”
Mr. Ballmer says he took that as an endorsement of his plan. That evening, some of them played poker, drank Scotch and gathered around the lodge’s fireplace.
The next month, hedge fund ValueAct Capital disclosed a $2 billion Microsoft stake. ValueAct’s CEO Jeffrey Ubben at a conference said Microsoft’s stock was undervalued. Other shareholders were urging it to increase its dividend and shed noncore businesses. A ValueAct spokesman declines further comment. In September, Microsoft increased its dividend but hasn’t sold off businesses investors have urged it to, such as the Bing search engine.
Mr. Ballmer hewed to Mr. Mulally’s recommendations. For years, he had consulted with Microsoft’s unit chiefs individually, often dispensing marching orders. Now, he began inviting them to sit together in a circle in his office to foster camaraderie.
It was a lurching corporate-culture change. “It’s not the way we operated at all in Steve’s 30-plus years of leadership of the company,” says Mr. Nadella, an executive vice president.
Mr. Ballmer says his senior team struggled with the New Steve. Some resisted on matters large—combining engineering teams—and small, such as weekly status reports.
Qi Lu, an executive vice president, submitted a 56-page report on applications and services. Mr. Ballmer sent it back, insisting on just three pages—part of a new mandate to encourage the simplicity needed for collaboration. Mr. Lu says he retorted: “But you always want the data and detail!”
Mr. Ballmer says he started to realize he had trained managers to see the trees, not the forest, and that many weren’t going to take his new mandates to heart.
In May, he began wondering whether he could meet the pace the board demanded. “No matter how fast I want to change, there will be some hesitation from all constituents—employees, directors, investors, partners, vendors, customers, you name it—to believe I’m serious about it, maybe even myself,” he says.
His personal turning point came on a London street. Winding down from a run one morning during a May trip, he had a few minutes to stroll, some rare spare time for recent months. For the first time, he began thinking Microsoft might change faster without him.
“At the end of the day, we need to break a pattern,” he says. “Face it: I’m a pattern.”
Mr. Ballmer says he secretly began drafting retirement letters—ultimately some 40 of them, ranging from maudlin to radical.
On a plane from Europe in late May, he told Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith that it “might be the time for me to go.” The next day, Mr. Ballmer called Mr. Thompson, with the same message.
Mr. Thompson called two other directors, Mr. Luczo and Charles Noski, former Bank of America Corp. BAC +0.84% vice chairman, and says he told them: “If Steve’s ready to go, let’s see if we can get on with this.”
At the board’s June meeting in Bellevue, Wash., Mr. Ballmer says he told the directors: “While I would like to stay here a few more years, it doesn’t make sense for me to start the transformation and for someone else to come in during the middle.”
The board wasn’t “surprised or shocked,” says Mr. Noski, given directors’ conversations with Mr. Ballmer. Mr. Thompson says he and others indicated that “fresh eyes and ears might accelerate what we’re trying to do here.”
Mr. Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, told Mr. Ballmer that he understood from experience how hard it was to leave when Microsoft was your “life,” says someone familiar with Mr. Gates’s thinking. Mr. Gates told the board he supported Mr. Ballmer’s departure if it ensured Microsoft “remains successful,” this person says.
That night, after Mr. Ballmer watched his son sing at his high-school baccalaureate ceremony—a Coldplay song with the lyrics: “It’s such a shame for us to part; nobody said it was easy; no one ever said it would be this hard”—he says he told his wife and three sons he was probably leaving Microsoft. They all cried.
On Aug. 21, the board held a conference call to accept Mr. Ballmer’s retirement. Mr. Gates and Mr. Thompson sat with Mr. Ballmer in his office. It was over in less than an hour.
Mr. Ballmer vows not to be a lame duck.
“Charge! Charge! Charge!” he bellows, jumping up from an interview and lunging forward while pumping his fist forward like a battering ram. “I’m not going to wimp away from anything!”
He has remained active, shepherding a $7.5 billion deal to buy Nokia’s mobile businesses and fine-tuning holiday-marketing strategies for Microsoft’s Surface tablets and new Xbox game console. In October, Microsoft reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings.
At his final annual employee meeting this September, Mr. Ballmer gave high-fives and ran off the stage to the song: “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from the movie “Dirty Dancing.”
Last month, walking along Lake Washington, Mr. Ballmer bumped into Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, who was fired from earlier jobs and now is thriving. Mr. Carroll says he told his neighbor he went through “something like this” and predicted it is “going to be great.”
Mr. Ballmer says he is weighing casual offers as varied as university teaching and coaching his youngest son’s high-school basketball team. He plans no big decisions for at least six months—except that he won’t run another big company. He says he’s open to remaining a Microsoft director.
At a recent executive meeting, he perched on a stool to review developments. His third slide was labeled “New CEO.”
“Not a soul in this room doesn’t think we need to go through this transition,” he said. As he stood up, his voice started to crack: “As much as I wish I could stay your CEO, I still own a big chunk of Microsoft, and I’m going to keep it.”
He walked back toward the stool, then turned around and said in a near-whisper: “Please take good care of Microsoft.”

You could read also Reporter’s Notebook: Two Days With Steve Ballmer [The Wall Street Journal, Nov 15, 2013] ending this way: 

… This summer when he was deciding whether to step down, Mr. Ballmer quietly met with big institutional investors in Boston and San Francisco. The head of one big institution told him, “Microsoft would be better served with you gone.” Mr. Ballmer, who’s the second largest individual shareholder, knew the investor might get his wish. Yet, he argued, “Who cares more about Microsoft than I do? I own a lot. It’s my life.”

And that showed how his emotions alternate between bluster and wistfulness. The deed is done, the decision has been made, a new CEO is imminent. But Mr. Ballmer is struggling because Microsoft has been so much more than a job … as he said, “my life.”

My closing remarks:

  1. The next CEO problem to be solved is definitely the #1 issue for the future of the Microsoft
  2. The #2 issue is how successfully the 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] for which the 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] is providing an interim answer, i.e. till the arrival of the new CEO
  3. The #3 isssue is How the device play will unfold in the new Microsoft organization? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 14, 2013]. If Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia, and a previous senior executive of Microsoft, will become the next CEO then Minutes of a high-octane but also expert evangelist CEO: Stephen Elop, Nokia [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 13, 2013] could provide some clue for changes to be expected as a strategic evolution of the current one described in the already mentioned [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 14, 2013]. Even in case when he will not be selected by the Microsoft board as the next CEO he will have very strong influence on the device play for the initial first year integration of the acquired Nokia businesses into Microsoft, for very simple reason, that nobody could do this, and a successfull integration is a higher priority, #2 issue.
  4. Strategically, however, the most important issue is the

    5. Microsoft reorg for delivering/supporting high-value experiences/activities [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 11, 2013]

  5. Everything else which might be a crucial issue during this process is highly controversial, without any official clues from Microsoft or any other stakeholder sources. The most controversial among all of them is the issue of non-profitable and/or not necessarily integral to Microsoft businesses. These are the Bing and the Xbox businesses. The range of external opinions is extremely large with investment circles firmly believing that neither Bing nor Xbox are inherently integral to Microsoft, and most of the external development community with an exacly opposite belief of those businesses being inherently internal.

  6. My personal opinion is that with spin-off both extremes could be served sufficiently well, and even open completely new business development opportunities for both Bing and Xbox to grow substantially faster and bigger than otherwise. I would be especially enthusiastic for an Xbox spin-off as that business is already (with upcoming Oct 22 introduction of Xbox One) not a gaming console, but an entertainment ecosystem type of business. As such it would get enormous growth opportunities with its spin-off from the tightly integrated Microsoft mother ship.

  7. The ultimate issue for me, however, is how the currently quite crippled and/or bureaucratic marketing machinery of Microsoft could be completely overhauled as part of Nokia integration, and how fast that could be achieved, if any? I mean a new marketing machinery which is thriving on the huge number of opportunities provided by already delivered game-changing products and technologies, instead of not understanding them at all. I mean not simply an ability to produce videos like the one in the beginning of this post, but a competency to produce whole storyboards for production of such videos and other communication materials. One might call it “high-octane marketing” for simplicity. Even more I envisage such integration of the marketing activities into the whole supply chain management (SCM) as is done in Samsung. See my Samsung has unbeatable supply chain management, it is incredibly good in everything which is consumer hardware, but vulnerability remains in software and M&A [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 11, 2013] post for that, from which I will copy the following illustration here as well:

Xamarin: C# developers of native “business” and “mobile workforce” applications now can easily work cross-platform, for Android and iOS clients as well

November 15, 2013 2:25 pm / 1 Comment on Xamarin: C# developers of native “business” and “mobile workforce” applications now can easily work cross-platform, for Android and iOS clients as well

… while other cross-platform applications, i.e. “applications for consumers only” are prohibited for C# developers by the still high price of Xamarin, which essentially applies to indie and start-up developers only

The mobile application development technology behind this, from the cloud to the clients, was extensively covered in Windows Phone 8: getting much closer to a unified development platform with Windows 8 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 8, 2012] post of mine (including the cross-platform possibilities with Xamarin already), and then continued in Windows Azure becoming an unbeatable offering on the cloud computing market [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 28, 2013] and Microsoft partners empowered with ‘cloud first’, high-value and next-gen experiences for big data, enterprise social, and mobility on wide variety of Windows devices and Windows Server + Windows Azure + Visual Studio as the platform [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 10, 2013] posts for the cloud part.

Note: Decide for yourself how that “consumers only applications by indie and start-up developers” type of exclusion will effect the cross platform development needs, after you take a look at the current state of the evolution of smartphone and tablet markets:

 

Q3’13 smartphone and overall mobile phone markets: Android smartphones surpassed 80% of the market, with Samsung increasing its share to 32.1% against Apple’s 12.1% only; while Nokia achieved a strong niche market position both in “proper” (Lumia) and “de facto” (Asha Touch) smartphones 
[‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 14, 2013]

The tablet market in Q1-Q3’13: It was mainly shaped by white-box vendors while Samsung was quite successfully attacking both Apple and the white-box vendors with triple digit growth both worldwide and in Mainland China 
[‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 14, 2013]

Details

For one of the problems solved now by Microsoft see my Obstacles for .NET on other platforms [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 15, 2013] post.

To understand what is the situation now I will start with:

In: Cross Platform .NET Just A Lot Got Better [Haacked blog, Nov 13, 2013]

Not long ago I wrote a blog post about how platform restrictions harm .NET. This led to a lot of discussion online and on Twitter. At some point David Kean suggested a more productive approach would be to create a UserVoice issue. So I did and it quickly gathered a lot of votes.

…

Phil Haack – Customer Feedback for Microsoft http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/users/40986152-phil-haack:

Remove the platform restriction on Microsoft NuGet packages 4,929 votes
Phil Haack shared this idea and gave it 3 votes  ·  Sep 26, 2013

COMPLETED  ·  Visual Studio team (Product Team, Microsoft) responded
Thanks a lot for this suggestion and all the votes.
We’re happy to announce that we’ve removed the Windows-only restriction from our license. We’ve applied this new license to most of our packages and will continue to use this license moving forward.
Here is our announcement:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2013/11/13/pcl-and-net-nuget-libraries-are-now-enabled-for-xamarin.aspx
For reference, the license for stable packages can be found here:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=329770
Thanks,
Immo Landwerth
Program Manager, .NET Framework Team
Phil Haack commented  ·  Nov 13, 2013
Amazing! Thanks! This is great!

Bravo!

Serious Kudos to the .NET team for this. It looks like most of the interesting PCL packages are now licensed without platform restrictions. As an example of how this small change sends out ripples of goodness, we can now make Octokit.net depend on portable HttpClient and make Octokit.net itself more cross platform and portable without a huge amount of work.

I’m also excited about the partnership between Microsoft and Xamarin this represents. I do believe C# is a great language for cross-platform development and it’s good to see Microsoft jumping back on board with this. This is a marked change from the situation I wrote about in 2012.

  • then will go to S. Somasegar, Corporate Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft:

In: Visual Studio 2013 Launch: Announcing Visual Studio Online [Somasegar’s blog, Nov 13, 2013]

… Microsoft and Xamarin are collaborating to help .NET developers broaden the reach of their applications to additional devices, including iOS and Android …

…

Partner News

With today’s launch of Visual Studio 2013, we have 123 products from 74 partners available already as Visual Studio 2013 extensions.  As part of an ecosystem of developer tools experiences, Visual Studio continues to be a platform for delivering a great breadth of developer experiences.

Xamarin

The devices and services transformation is driving developers to think about how they will build applications that reach the greatest breadth of devices and end-user experiences.  We’ve offered great HTML-based cross platform development experiences in Visual Studio with ASP.NET and JavaScript.  But our .NET developers have also asked us how they can broaden the reach of their applications and skills. 

Today, I am excited to announce a broad collaboration between Microsoft and Xamarin.  Xamarin’s solution enables developers to leverage Visual Studio, Windows Azure and .NET to further extend the reach of their business applications across multiple devices, including iOS and Android.

The collaboration between Xamarin and Microsoft brings several benefits for developers today.  First, as an initial step in a technical partnership, Xamarin’s next release that is being announced today will support Portable Class Libraries, enabling developers to share libraries and components across a breadth of Microsoft and non-Microsoft platforms.  Second, Professional, Premium and Ultimate MSDN subscribers will have access to exclusive benefits for getting started with Xamarin, including new training resources, extended evaluation access to Xamarin’s Visual Studio integration and special pricing on Xamarin products.

…

Xamarin, the company that empowers developers to build fully native apps for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac from a single shared code base, today announced a global collaboration with Microsoft that makes it easy for mobile developers to build native mobile apps for all major platforms in Visual Studio. Xamarin is the only solution that unifies native iOS, Android and Windows app development in Visual Studio—bridging one of the largest developer bases in the world to the most successful mobile device platforms.

A highly competitive app marketplace and the consumerization of IT have put tremendous pressure on developers to deliver high quality mobile user experiences for both consumers and employees. A small bug or crash can lead to permanent app abandonment or poor reviews. Device fragmentation, with hundreds of devices on the market for iOS and Android alone, multiplies testing efforts resulting in a time-consuming and costly development process. This is further complicated by faster release cycles for mobile, necessitating more stringent and efficient regression testing.

The collaboration spans three areas:

  • A technical collaboration to better integrate Xamarin technology with Microsoft developer tools and services.
    Aligned with this goal, Xamarin is a SimShip partner for Visual Studio 2013, releasing same-day support for Microsoft’s latest Visual Studio release that launched today. In addition, Xamarin has released today full integration for Microsoft’s Portable Library projects in iOS and Android apps, making it easier than ever for developers to share code across devices.
  • Xamarin’s recently launched Xamarin University is now free to MSDN subscribers. The training course helps developers become successful with native iOS and Android development over the course of 30 days. Classes for the $1,995 program kick off in January 2014, with a limited number of seats available at no cost for MSDN subscribers.
  • MSDN subscribers have exclusive trial and pricing options to Xamarin subscriptions for individuals and teams.

    Get a 90-day trial to Xamarin, sign up for Xamarin University for free (normally $1,995), and save 30-50% on Xamarin with special MSDN pricing.
    All the productivity you love in Visual Studio and C#,
    on iOS and Android.

The broad collaboration between Microsoft and Xamarin which we announced today is targeted at supporting developers interested in extending their applications across multiple devices, said S. Somasegar, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Corporation. With Xamarin, developers combine all of the productivity benefits of C#, Visual Studio 2013 and Windows Azure with the flexibility to quickly build for multiple device targets.

According to Gartner, by 2016, 70 percent of the mobile workforce will have a smartphone, half of which will be purchased by the employee, and 90 percent of enterprises will have two or more platforms to support. Faced with high expectations for mobile user experiences and the pressures of BYOD, companies and developers alike are looking for scalable ways to migrate business practices and customer interactions to high-performance, native apps on multiple platforms.

To meet this need to support heterogeneous mobile environments, Microsoft and Xamarin are making it easy for developers to mobilize their existing skills and code. By standardizing mobile app development with Xamarin and C#, developers are able to share on average 75 percent of their source code across device platforms, while still delivering fully native apps. Xamarin supports 100 percent of both iOS and Android APIs—anything that can be done in Objective-C or Java can be done in C# with Xamarin.

In just two years, Xamarin has amassed a community of over 440,000 developers in 70 countries, more than 20,000 paying accounts and a network of over 120 consulting partners globally.

We live in a multi-platform world, and by embracing Xamarin, Microsoft is enabling its developer community to thrive as mobile developers, said Nat Friedman, CEO and cofounder, Xamarin. Our collaboration with Microsoft will accelerate enterprise mobility for millions of developers.

The groundbreaking partnership was announced as part of the Visual Studio Live 2013 launch event in New York City. In addition, Xamarin and Microsoft have teamed up with the popular podcast, .NET Rocks!, for a 20-city nationwide road show featuring live demos on how to use Visual Studio 2013, Xamarin and Windows Azure to build and scale mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows. For a full list of cities and to sign up for an event, please visit: xamarin.com/modern-apps-roadshow

About Xamarin
Xamarin is the new standard for enterprise mobile development. No other platform enables businesses to reach all major devices—iOS, Android, Mac and Windows—with 100 percent fully native apps from a single code base. With Xamarin, businesses standardize mobile app development in C#, share on average 75 percent source code across platforms, and leverage their existing skills, teams, tools and code to rapidly deliver great apps with broad reach. Xamarin is used by over 430,000 developers from more than 100 Fortune 500 companies and over 20,000 paying customers including Clear Channel, Bosch, McKesson, Halliburton, Cognizant, GitHub, Rdio and WebMD, to accelerate the creation of mission-critical consumer and enterprise apps. For more information, please visit: xamarin.com, read our blog, and follow us on Twitter @xamarinhq.

Earlier today, Soma announced a collaboration between Microsoft and Xamarin. As you probably know, Xamarin’s Visual Studio extension enables developers to use VS and .NET to extend the reach of their apps across multiple devices, including iOS and Android. As part of that collaboration, today, we are announcing two releases around the .NET portable class libraries (PCLs) that support this collaboration:

Microsoft .NET NuGet Libraries Released

Today we released the following portable libraries with our new license, on NuGet.org:

You can now start using these libraries with Xamarin tools, either directly or as the dependencies of portable libraries that you reference.

We also took the opportunity to apply the same license to Microsoft .NET NuGet libraries, which aren’t fully portable today, like Entity Framework and all of the Microsoft AspNet packages. These libraries target the full .NET Framework, so they’re not intended to be used with Xamarin’s iOS and Android tools (just like they don’t target Windows Phone or Windows Store).

These releases will enable significantly more use of these common libraries across Windows and non-Windows platforms, including in open source projects.

Cross-platform app developers can now use PCL

imagePortable class libraries are a great option for app developers building for Microsoft platforms in Visual Studio, to share key business functionality across Microsoft platforms. Many developers use the PCL technology today, for example, to share app logic across Windows Store and Windows Phone. Today’s announcement enables developers using Xamarin’s tools to share these libraries as well.

In Visual Studio, you’ll continue to use Portable Class Library projects but will be able to reference them from within Xamarin’s tools for VS. That means that you can write rich cross-platform libraries and take advantage of them from all of your .NET apps.

The following image demonstrates an example set of .NET NuGet library references that you can use within one of your portable libraries. The .NET NuGet libraries will enable new scenarios and great new libraries built on top of them.

You can build cross-platform libraries with .NET

This announcement also benefits .NET developers writing reusable and open source libraries. You’ve probably used some of these libraries, for example Json.NET. These developers have been very vocal about wanting this change. This announcement greatly benefits those library developers, enabling them to leverage our portable libraries in their libraries.

Getting started with portable libraries and Xamarin

You can start by building portable libraries in Visual Studio, as you can see in the screenshot above. You can take advantage of the portable libraries that we released today. Write code!

You’ll need an updated NuGet client, to take advantage of this new scenario. Make sure that you are using NuGet 2.7.2 or higher, or just download the latest NuGet for your VS version from the Installing NuGet page.

We are working closely with Xamarin to ensure that our NuGet libraries work well with Xamarin tools, as well as PCL generally. Please tell us if you find any issues. We’ll get them resolved and post them to our known issues page.

Thank You

Thank you for the feedback on UserVoice. With today’s announcement, we can mark the request to Remove the platform restriction on Microsoft NuGet packages as complete. Thanks to Phil Haack for filing the issue. Coupled with our collaboration with Xamarin, .NET developers have some compelling tools, especially for targeting mobile devices.

Both Microsoft and Xamarin want to see this scenario succeed. We’d love your feedback. Please tell us how the new features are working for you.

This post was written by Rich Lander, a Program Manager on the .NET Team.

[Some] Comments

Immo Landwerth [MSFT] 13 Nov 2013 1:24 PM

Thanks a lot for the kind words!

@Curt: We absolutely understand that PCL support in Visual Studio express editions is super important to many of our developers. That’s why it’s on our list. However, I can’t promise that we actually end up delivering it in the VS 2013 time frame. As you’ve seen today, there is a lot of great stuff going on and resources are always more scarce than one would hope.

Gz 14 Nov 2013 4:19 AM

Xamarin is great but their pricing is insane! even with the MSDN discount. We’re a tiny start-up development house that has benefited from the MS BizSpark programme and we simply cannot stretch to paying out a thousand bucks per platform, per year, per developer – mobile isn’t even a revenue generator for us – it would merely be extending some functionality from our main apps to mobile and we’d give it to customers for free. I know they have a free & an indie edition blah blah blah but we wanna work in VS. The good news is that Xamarin will soon have a competitor in this space that could potentially blow them out of the water with full VS support and direct access to native APIs on each platform (iOS, Android & Mac) and their pricing will be less than 1/3rd of Xamarin’s. I’ve been sworn to secrecy about it but expect to have a cost-effective Xamarin alternative before the end of the year. (No I don’t work for the company, just got some info about it recently).

Stilgar 14 Nov 2013 8:30 AM

I second the need for PCLs in Express editions. Otherwise your company’s constant claims that the tooling for Windows 8 and Windows Phone development is free is pure hypocrisy.

TL;DR: You can now (legally) use our .NET OData client and ODataLib on Android and iOS.

Backstory

For a while now we have been working with our legal team to improve the terms you agree to when you use one of our libraries (WCF Data Services, our OData client, or ODataLib). A year and a half ago, we announced that our EULA would include a redistribution clause. With the release of WCF Data Services 5.6.0, we introduced portable libraries for two primary reasons:

    1. Portable libraries reduce the amount of duplicate code and #ifdefs in our code base.

    2. Portable libraries increase our reach through third-party tooling like Xamarin (more on that later).

      It took some work to get there, and we had to make some sacrifices along the way, but we are now focused exclusively on portable libraries for client-side code. Unfortunately, our EULA still contained a clause that prevented the redistributable code from being legally used on a platform other than Windows.

      OData and Xamarin: Extending developer reach to many platforms

      We are really excited about Microsoft’s new collaboration with Xamarin. As Soma says, this collaboration will allow .NET developers to broaden the reach of their applications and skills. This has long been the mantra of OData – a standardized ecosystem of services and consumers that enables consumers on any platform to easily consume services developed on any platform. This collaboration will make it much easier to write a shared code base that allows consumption of OData on Windows, Android or iOS.

      EULA change

      To fully enable this scenario, we needed to update our EULA. We, along with several other teams at Microsoft, are rolling out a new EULA today that has relaxed the distribution requirements. Most importantly, we removed the clause that prevented redistributable code from being used on Android and iOS.

      The new EULA is effective immediately for all of our NuGet packages. This means that (even though we already released 5.6.0) you can create a Xamarin project today, take a new dependency on our OData client, and legally run that application on any platform you wish.

      Thanks

      As always, we really appreciate your feedback. It frequently takes us some time to react, but the credit for this change is due entirely to customer feedback. We hear you. Keep it coming.

      Thanks,
      The OData Team

      Leading PC vendors of the past: Go enterprise or die!

      November 7, 2013 11:17 am / 1 Comment on Leading PC vendors of the past: Go enterprise or die!

      Nov 5, 2013: Acer Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang Tenders Resignation

      … J.T. Wang, chairman and CEO of Acer, said, “Acer encountered many complicated and harsh challenges in the past few years. With the consecutive poor financial results, it is time for me to hand over the responsibility to a new leadership team to path the way for a new era.” …

      What I found after carefully analyzing the above outcome is summarized in the titles of the detailed sections of this post:

      1. To be great only for consumers was not enough to survive
      2. Taiwan is still confused
      3. How Acer’s “new strategy” that has been in place since April 1, 2011 came to an end
      4. The road which lead to Acer downfall

      1. To be great only for consumers was not enough to survive

      THE LATEST EPISODES showing what was great from a general consumer point of view but not enough by far from enterprise point of view:

      We would all like to be a touch smarter, a touch cooler, a touch classier, and a touch simpler… With Acer it is possible, explore beyond limits with our touch & type products.
      IFA BERLIN 2013. For the those who missed the latest designed ‘Touch’ innovations from Acer. The Iconia A3: 10.1″ display with wide viewing angle and immersive sound. The Aspire R7: Award wining designed for touch notebook with active pen. The Liquid S2: Full HD 6″ display with 4K recording.
      Highlights from Acer’s Computex Global Press Conference, product booth, and Tiësto party
      See what happended during Acer’s Global Press Conference in New York City on May 3rd, 2013. Redefining the computing experience.

      AcerCloud™ – Be Free! [Acer YouTube channel, Oct 23, 2012]

      AcerCloud lets you access your photos, music, videos and documents wirelessly and simultaneously on all devices anytime and anywhere – it enriches your life with more freedom! See how AcerCloud saves Roy from Major embarrassment! -http://bit.ly/AcerCloud

      AND BACK THEN: May 9, 2011: Interview [AllThingsD]: Ousted Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci Talks About His Departure

      … Lanci said he was pushing the company to become more mobile-focused and more global. Acer, he said, needed to look beyond Taiwan as the world shifted to one in which Intel and Microsoft had less power and computer makers needed to do more work for themselves. … “The real major issue was doing that in Taiwan, this was not possible,” Lanci said. “We needed to go outside Taiwan, be it China or India or even the U.S. or Europe, wherever you can find software resources, software know-how.”

      What Lanci wanted to move beyond:

      Some highlights of the Acer Global Press Conference held in New York on November 23, 2010. Clear.fi, the Acer media sharing system, evolves with the introduction of some brand new products. Iconia, dual screen device, offers an entirely new touch experience, the new tablets ensure HD entertainment and Alive, the next generation content store, provides users with content tailored to their personal interests.
      Dual-screen, multi-touch: ICONIA is the new 14-inches tablet that incorporates the best features of any notebook or tablet device and much more! Thanks to its innovative concept ICONIA was the proud winner of the ‘Last Gadget Standing’ competition at CES 2011, Las Vegas. Welcome to a brand new computing and touch experience!
      Take a closer look at liquid mini, the compact and stylish Acer smartphone that packs maximum possibilities in a minimum size. Discover how many features are enclosed in this charming Android smartphone: multi-touch display, 5 megapixels camera, Acer’s exclusive Social Jogger app that integrates updates from your social network accounts into one feed… and much more!
      At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the new Acer Iconia Tab family was officially introduced: see here the Iconia Tab A500, with a 10.1 display and Android OS, Iconia Tab A100, 7″ display with Android, and Iconia Tab W500, with 10.1″ display and Windows OS.
      NY Global Press Conference, November 23rd, 2010 – Iconia, the outstanding Acer’s dual screen device with all-point multi touch functionality, and the 10.1″ Windows tablet, completely touch screen but also equipped with a docking device that includes a keyboard, introduced by Jim Wong, Senior Corporate Vice President, Acer Group, President ITGO, Acer Inc.
      NY Global Press Conference, November 23rd, 2010 – Enter into the world of Clear.fi: the smartest way to enjoy multimedia at home. Jim Wong, Senior Corporate Vice President, Acer Group, President ITGO, Acer Inc., explains that contents stored on any Clear.fi enabled devices can be shared seamlessly with the other devices using the same interface. Take also a look to the new 10.1″ tablet that ensure powerful performances, the 7″ tablet, ideal on the go, and, finally, the 4.8″phone that is a real mini tablet!

       

      The Acer Group is the culmination of years of innovation and change. We have become the global group we are today by adhering to the values and principles we established at our foundation. The language of these values may have changed, but our respect for and dedication to them has not.

      ACER GROUP CORE VALUES:

      The way we must act:
      (1) Innovative
      (2) Fast
      (3) Effective

      The pillars on which we must base our actions:

      (1) Value Creating
      (2) Customer-centric
      (3) Ethical
      (4) Caring

      THE ACER GROUP’S MISSION:

      “User-friendly technology makes all the difference in today’s world. Indeed, the innovation and breakthroughs that technology brings can change the course of history.” With this introduction, the Acer Chairman delivers a clear message of the responsibilities and opportunities that technology can provide. Breaking down the barriers between people and technology is not an isolated event. It’s an ongoing process that unlocks our potential to bring innovation to life and embrace the challenges of the future.

      As Acer continues to break down barriers, we have the real possibility to make a difference to the world we live in.
      J. T. Wang
      Chairman, Acer Inc.

      		  

      Lanci, who was replaced as CEO in March, said that the interests that control Acer were worried that his plan would lead to a de-Taiwanization of the company.

      “I said, ‘Look, it is not de-Taiwanization,’” he said. “It is just globalization. If we want to be in the top three (PC makers) in the next three to five years, we need to be a global company and we need to leverage resources wherever they are.”

      …

      Although today’s tablets are a consumer phenomenon, Lanci said the push by Microsoft to deliver Windows on ARM-based chips will help the devices move solidly into the business domain.

      “You can easily think about a tablet thin and light, like the current iPad 2,” he said, but offering everything that the PC offers as well. However, he said that Acer needed to do more to prepare for that world. In addition to boosting its own software capabilities, he said the company needed a different relationship with chipmakers. The PC world, he said, was one of buying and selling components, with pricing and availability based solely on volume. The mobile world, he said, is based on close partnerships and strategic alliances.

      As for who is doing things right, Apple is clearly winning, but there are others also making moves to adjust for the shifting world.

      “I see Samsung is probably doing the right thing,” he said. “HP, maybe. It depends what they are going to do with software and with WebOS.”

      However, he said much of the PC industry is in a similar position where Acer was.

      So with Acer Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang Tenders Resignation as the result of Acer Q3’13 Financial Results: Consolidated Revenue NT$92.15B (US$3.11B), Operating Loss NT$2.57B (US$86.61M), Intangible Asset Impairment NT$9.94B (US$335.13M) leading PC vendors of the past should take advice from Dell Goes Private: 8 Things To Expect [InformationWeek, Nov 4, 2013]

      Dell CEO Michael Dell took the company private to gain more independence from Wall Street investors. Now that the buyout’s cleared, what moves can customers expect?

      After eight months of maneuvering, Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell has finally taken the company private. Dell executives remained tightlipped about the buyout as the process wore on, and as the flailing PC market continued to punish the company’s margins. But now that Dell has officially delisted, many of its enterprise customers no doubt are asking the question: How will this affect me?

      Many have probably been asking the question for months. Activist investors such as Carl Icahn at times appeared to have the upper hand against Michael Dell. It seemed plausible at points that the founder might be ousted from his own company, or that pieces of the company might be sold off.

      And even after it became clear Michael Dell would prevail, questions still remained. Observers widely interpreted that Dell didn’t want the burden of Wall Street’s quarterly scrutiny; after all, it’s hard to invest in new enterprise services when shareholders are howling about PC profits every three months. But now that Dell has rid himself of investor pressure, the question still remains: What will he do with his new flexibility, and how will it help customers?

      Dell North America President PH Ferrand spoke withInformationWeek about Dell’s strategy as a privately held company. Here are eight takeaways from the conversation.

      1. Dell can make investments as a private company that it couldn’t make as a public company.

      Ferrand affirmed one of the buyout process’s dominant narratives: that from Dell’s perspective, Wall Street was more trouble than it was worth. Ferrand said going private will give the company more flexibility. It “might not have been obvious to investors” when the company needed to double down on investments, he said.

      2. Dell sees no reason to make a smartphone but will continue to make PCs.

      “Very few players make money [selling smartphones],” Ferrand said. “We don’t feel we have to be in the space.”

      That’s consistent with what Michael Dell told InformationWeek last year at Dell World. But many of the device manufacturers with which Dell competes have started positioning smartphones as a gateway to consumer sales and BYOD business. Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s device business is a notable example. Execs at HP, another company struggling to adjust to the mobile world, have repeatedly indicated that a smartphone is coming.

      Why is Dell still resisting the trend? “The IT market is a $3 trillion business and we are about 2% of that,” Ferrand said. “We don’t need to have phones to get to 3% or 4%.”

      Even so, Ferrand said Dell remains committed to PCs and intends to become a leader in the commercial tablet space. He said he can’t rule out a Dell smartphone eventually but predicted that in the meantime, people will soon stop differentiating between tablets and computers; instead, they’ll simply talk broadly about mobile devices. If this revolution in user behavior happens, Dell hopes its Venue 11 Pro tablet will be one of the devices that gets it started; a “three-in-one” device, it attaches to a keyboard to become a laptop and docks to an external monitor to become a desktop replacement.

      3. Dell will focus on the hybrid cloud.

      Ferrand highlighted hybrid cloud services as a market on which Dell will focus, and which Dell sees as ripe for growth. “We want to dominate hybrid,” he said, explaining that customers want a company that will allow them to be flexible with their data. Customers want to move applications between private and public clouds as they see fit, and they want security from outages and data leaks, he said. He cited some of the investments Dell has already made to fulfill these needs, such as its acquisition of Gale, a company that makes cloud automation tools.

      But he said direct relationships with customers would be one of Dell’s defining traits as it builds its cloud business. With competitors such as HP, Microsoft, IBM and others occupying the same space, Dell hopes it can stand out not only with its products but also by serving as a “trusted advisor” for its customers.

      4. Dell wants to enable IT to manage BYOD and fragmented workplaces.

      Ferrand said device choice has become a smaller part of Dell’s conversations with customers. The reason? Dell’s cloud, virtualization and device management products allow companies to employ applications to whomever needs them, regardless of what kind device the person is using.

      “Connecting devices” will be one of Dell’s core competencies as a private company, Ferrand said, and it will involve a variety of products from the company’s existing portfolio, from Wyse technologies for thin clients, to KACE products for management and deployment, to Credent technologies for added security. Device management tools and virtual desktop products are fairly common, but Dell hopes the breadth of its offerings can help it to stand out. This “one-stop shop” mentality plays in the “trusted advisor” persona noted above. Ferrand said the attitude would apply to all Dell’s businesses.

      5. Dell will invest in next-gen data center technologies and big-data products.

      Ferrand also said Dell would continue to focus on next-generation data center products and big-data applications. The company has already achieved some early momentum with its Active System line ofconverged infrastructure products, as well as its hyperscale servers built around energy-efficient ARM processors. But for both these data centers products and its emerging analytics tools to stand out in the crowded market, Dell will need to continue showing that its software assets are starting to coalesce. The company spent several years acquiring software patents and expertise, but Dell’s success will rely on integrating all of the technologies at the right price and pace.

      6. Dell will increase its international sales coverage.

      U.S. customers currently account for an inordinate amount of Dell’s business but the company believes emerging markets will be central to its long-term success. Ferrand said the company will continue to participate heavily with channel partners but will also expand its fleet of direct sales representatives throughout the world.

      7. Dell will continue to focus on the middle market.

      As its enterprise portfolio has expanded, Dell has tried to carve out a niche by delivering enterprise-class resources to SMBs and mid-market customers. Ferrand said Dell will continue this strategy as a private company partly because the middle market contains the largest group of potential customers. But he said this focus also enables Dell to design more flexible products. It’s easier to scale up a mid-market architecture than to affordably repackage one designed for large companies, he said.

      8. Dell will execute moves more quickly than in the past.

      Ferrand didn’t offer any hints regarding big moves Dell might be planning — such as another major acquisition, or some kind of new product launch. But he said customers can expect Dell to quicken the pace of innovation. As a publicly-traded corporation, the company faced a variety of hurdles in making aggressive moves. But with Michael Dell now securely in the driver’s seat, Ferrand said changes will unroll much more quickly.

      2. Taiwan is still confused:

      China Times: China’s Internet phenomenon sends warning to Taiwan [Focus Taiwan, Nov 6, 2013]

      MomentCam, a mobile app that transforms pictures into cartoons, has quickly shot to popularity since its launch on Aug. 31, drawing 18.24 million users over the past two months.

      The Chinese company that developed the app, founded by Ren Xiaoqing, has obtained new investment of 30 million Chinese yuan since the app hit the market.

      The success story marks the rise of yet another Chinese Internet entrepreneur after Ma Huateng of Tencent Inc., Jack Ma of Alibaba Group, Yao Jinbo of 58.com Inc., and Zhuang Chenchao of qunar.com.

      China’s booming Internet sector stands in sharp contrast to the situation in Taiwan, where the country’s star ICT industry has been losing its luster and the economy remains sluggish.

      Taiwan’s ICT companies have hit a bottleneck because they have failed to reposition themselves from contract manufacturers to technology developers. In order to rescue the ICT industry, it is crucial for Taiwan to take part in the thriving Internet economy.

      Google Inc. has seen its share price soar from US$85 to over US$1,000 within the nine years since it was launched in 2004, and it currently has a market value of US$338 billion. The market capitalization of Facebook, meanwhile, has reached 1.3 times that of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. — the world’s largest contract chip maker.

      Taiwan’s ICT companies must not continue to confine themselves to the contract manufacturing market. The government should promote an alliance between the ICT industries of Taiwan and China and remove the current restrictions on the flows of information, talent and capital across the Taiwan Strait to salvage Taiwan’s dying economy. (Editorial abstract — Nov. 6, 2013)

      MomentCam app, China’s latest overnight sensation [WantChinaTimes.com, Nov 6, 2013]

      imageThree cartoon portraits made with the MomentCam app. (Internet Photo)
      A smartphone application that converts pictures of the user into cute cartoon characters has become a hit overnight in China, with the number of subscribers topping 20 million in the fourth months after its launch.
      The application, called MomentCam in English — a phonetic rendering of the Chinese which means “magic manga camera,” rose to the top of the free apps category on the Apple online store in China in just three days and notched a record 3.25 million subscribers a day. On the back of its rapid success, it recently attracted a 10 million yuan (US$1.64 million) loan.
      The software was created by two young people, Ren Xiaoqing and Huang Guangming, both members of the Dark Horse Development Camp, a platform dedicated to startups.
      Ren Xiaoqian, a fine-arts major, conceived of the idea when working as a souvenir designer for Walmart in the US in 2006. “A popular [design] for Walmart back then was planting a human face on the body of a cartoon character, although the effect was quite ugly as well as the dark background. This gave me the idea to render photographs of people in a cartoony comic style, believing that it would be even more popular,” Ren said.
      In 2008, she encountered Huang Guangming, then a manager at Microsoft, and they decided to combine their respective expertise in the fields of fine art and computing by returning to China to found a startup.
      The company initially dedicated itself to the production of custom-made cartoon souvenirs for some major local companies before Ren decided to switch to online business entirely due to the ceiling for offline products and her dislike of the need to entertain clients to drum up business.
      From a slow start, the MomentCam app suddenly became a hit overnight. “We were not mentally prepared for the phenomenal growth of subscribers,” Ren admitted. The number of downloads topped 1 million in one month and 10 million in three months as people became aware of the software, which converts a photograph of a human into a cartoon figure in the space of a few seconds.
      Ren said the challenge now is how to maintain the number of subscribers to avoid it becoming a short-lived fad, a fate that has befallen a great many applications in China.

      Windows 8.1 tablet sales 20-30% below expectations [DIGITIMES, Oct 31, 2013]

      Channel retailers are seeing their Windows 8.1-based tablet sales in October 20-30% below than their original expectations, despite strong price/performance ratios.

      Asustek Computer’s recently released Transformer Book T100 is priced at US$349 for a 32GB model and US$399 for 64GB and after bundling with telecom services, the 64GB model’s price drops from NT$12,900 (US$438) to NT$5,000-6,000 in Taiwan.

      Sources from channel retailers pointed out that the weakening Windows 8.1 tablet demand is due to competition from PC and Android-based tablets. Most of these products have received price cuts after the release of Windows 8.1-based 2-in-1 devices.

      Since Windows 8.1-based tablets are starting to face problems similar to those of previous Windows-based models, the sources are concerned that inventory issues may rise again in 2014.

      So far, channel retailers have not yet received any word about price cuts from brand vendors, but some retailers expect Windows 8.1 tablets to receive over 20% discounts in December for the year-end shopping season.

      Dell expected to overtake Acer to become third-largest notebook vendor in 2014, say Taiwan makers [DIGITIMES, Sept 17, 2013]

      Microsoft’s ending Windows XP technical support in April 2014 has triggered growing replacement of business-use notebooks, and this is expected to significantly benefit Dell because Dell has more focus on business-use modes than other notebook vendors, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers. Consequently, Dell is expected to surpass Acer to become the global third-largest notebook vendor in 2014.

      Notebook vendors normally do not rely on business-use models for volume shipments mainly because sales are subject to the government sector’s and enterprises’ procurement scheduling, the sources indicated. But while demand for consumer notebooks has been shrinking due to competition from tablets and smartphones, business-use models have become the main source of growth for notebook vendors, the sources said.

      Dell is expected to continue to focus on the business-use market segment, especially after its privatization, the sources noted. Dell shipped 9.285 million notebooks globally in the first half of 2013, ranking fourth next to Acer’s shipments of 9.814 million units, the sources cited IDC statistics as indicating.

      Commentary: Suppliers need to prepare for Dell strategy change [DIGITIMES, Sept 27, 2013]

      As Dell is expected to become privatized, Taiwan’s upstream component suppliers may need to start preparing for the US vendor’s business reorganization.
      Michael Dell previously said that the company will accelerate its reorganization after becoming privatized and though the PC business will not be abandoned, it will surely no longer be the major focus of the US vendor.
      Dell’s financial report for the second quarter showed that the company still had about 33% of profits coming from computing-related product lines including desktops, notebooks and tablets. However, as the PC industry continues to decline, placing less emphasis on the PC business is a path Dell is likely to take in order to achieve growth in the future.
      The PC industry has already been shrinking for two consecutive years and is expected to continue declining in 2014. Although Wintel has been aggressively releasing new products and cutting prices, it has been unable to stimulate PC demand. This is a clear indication that the industry has already entered the decline stage and users may only replace their PC products when they are no long functional.
      PCs still have low penetration in emerging markets, but as consumers of these markets are also having high interest in smartphones and tablets, the PC industry is unlikely to return to a growth track through these markets.
      With the integration between software and hardware becoming a new trend of the IT market, upstream suppliers may also need to start preparing for Dell’s future strategy of combining software design with hardware products.

      Dell optimistic about Windows 8.1 for enterprise PCs [DIGITIMES, Aug 29, 2013]

      As Microsoft is ready to release Windows 8.1 on October 18, Jeff Clarke, Dell’s vice chairman and president of Global Operations and End User Computing Solutions, has expressed his optimism about the operating system. Compared to Android and iOS, Windows’ security and management abilities will allow the OS to become the top pick of the enterprise PC industry, Clarke noted.

      Although Clarke has mentioned that Dell is planning to release several Windows-based tablets in the second half, he has not provided much detail for the related plans.

      However, sources from the upstream supply chain has revealed that Dell is currently planning to release an 8-inch Windows-based tablet in the second half, targeting mainly the enterprise market.

      In addition, Dell is also considering releasing a 10.6-inch Windows tablet, adopting either a Core i or an Atom processor, the sources added.

      Dell aims to strengthen software businesses in Greater China [DIGITIMES, June 24, 2013]

      Dell has set up four major departments, End-User Computing, Enterprise Solutions Group (ESG), Dell Software Group (DSG) and Services, and plans to strengthen businesses in Greater China in 2013.
      The DSG was established earlier in 2013, while the Service department was formed only three years ago. With the four departments, Dell is able to push complete solutions as well as increase service consulting for its clients in Greater China.
      Dell has been acquiring solution providers in the market since 2010 and has acquired players such as Kace, SonicWall and Quest. Thanks to the acquisitions, Dell Taiwan’s software solution business currently has over one thousand clients that are using its solution services including datacenter, cloud computing, information and data management, mobile office management and security and data protection.
      Currently, Dell has about 40-50 service consultants for the Greater China region and is currently hiring more to support demand from the information and data management service sectors.
      Dell Taiwan president Terence Liao pointed out that Dell’s global revenues in 2012 were about US$50 billion and the software segment contributed about US$1.5 billion. Since Dell Taiwan’s software business also shared a similar proportion, it shows that the software business has already become a focus at Dell.
      In the future, Liao expects Dell Taiwan’s sales growth to be driven mainly by cloud computing and security and data protection services, and therefore will offer promotions to push the two services in the channel.

      3. How Acer’s “new strategy” that has been in place since April 1, 2011 came to an end:

      FOCUS TAIWAN – CNA ENGLISH NEWS:

      May 8, 2013: Acer forecasts shipment growth in Q2 (update)

      Taiwanese computer maker Acer Inc. said Wednesday that it is aiming for single-digit growth in shipments in the current quarter after returning to profitability in the first quarter.
      Acer Corporate President Jim Wong told an investor conference that he expects shipments of Acer’s notebooks, netbooks and tablets to remain flat or increase by up to 5 percent in the second quarter.
      The company said its total PC shipments fell 11 percent sequentially in the first quarter, but it did not disclose the actual number of units shipped.
      According to data compiled by research firm International Data Corp. (IDC), Acer shipments plunged 31.3 percent year-on-year to 6.15 million units in the first quarter, well below the industry’s average of a 13.9 percent decline.
      Wong said touch-enabled notebooks are expected to account for about 25 percent of Acer’s total notebook shipments in the second quarter, and that the ratio is likely to hit 30 to 35 percent by the end of the year.
      J.T. Wang, Acer’s chairman and chief executive officer, said his company plans to break even in the second quarter, when the shipping quantity of its touch notebooks is expected to double those shipped in the first quarter.
      He said Acer will continue to make more efforts in customer-centric designs and marketing to help the company regain growth momentum in the next decade.
      “Our approach is to focus on driving valuable growth that is profitable and enhances Acer brand value,” Wang said.
      The company’s operating margin in the quarter was 0.03 percent, and it had consolidated revenue of NT$91.7 billion (US$3.08 billion), down 9.4 percent from the previous quarter due to seasonal factors.
      The company’s first quarter net income was NT$515 million, or NT$0.19 per share, derived mainly from non-operating income such as foreign exchange gains and the disposal of stock.
      Acer’s operating income was NT$29 million, compared with an operating loss of NT$3.37 billion in the fourth quarter of last year that included a NT$3.5 billion intangible asset impairment charge for the loss in value of its rights to four trademarks.
      Acer unveiled a series of Windows 8-based laptops and tablets in New York on May 3 in a bid to boost shipments and strengthen its bottom line, but the company is still struggling to cope with weak PC demand and strong competition from other brands.
      Kirk Yang, a Hong Kong-based analyst at British banking group Barclays Plc, said Acer’s operating margin of 0.03 percent was much lower than his forecast of 0.18 percent and a consensus estimate of 0.17 percent by Bloomberg.
      “We expect Acer to guide revenue to grow by single digits sequentially, after posting quarter-on-quarter revenue contraction for five quarters in a row,” Yang said in a note to clients before the investor meeting.
      “However, we estimate that Acer’s operating margin in the second quarter of 2013 will not see any meaningful recovery due to weakening global PC demand and more low-priced tablet PC shipments in the mix,” he wrote.
      Barclays forecast that Acer’s sales revenue will grow 4.8 percent for the whole of 2013, with its operating margin improved to 0.8 percent. It maintained an “equal-weight” rating and a target price of NT$24 on the stock.
      Acer shares closed up 2.26 percent at NT$24.85 before the announcement of the quarterly results.

      August 8, 2013: Acer aiming to break even in Q3

      Taiwanese computer maker Acer Inc. said Thursday it expects to break even or record a small operating loss in the third quarter of 2013, despite its disappointing results in the previous quarter.
      The company’s mobile PC shipments — including notebooks, netbooks and tablets — are forecast to grow by 0-5 percent sequentially in the third quarter, Acer Corporate President Jim Wong told investors in a conference call.
      However, Acer has lowered its annual tablet shipment target to between 5.5 million and 6.5 million units, from its projection in May of 5 million to 10 million units, Wong said.
      He said touch-enabled notebooks will account for 20-25 percent of Acer’s total laptop shipments this year, below its previous estimate of 30 percent, in light of weakening demand for such products.
      “I think applications are most important. Today, there are still no killer applications for touch (notebooks),” Wong said in the conference call.
      Asked about Acer’s full-year outlook, he said the company is trying to “sustain its market share while protecting its bottom line.”
      The company is aiming to stay profitable in 2013 after registering losses over the past two years, Wong indicated.
      J.T. Wang, Acer’s chairman and chief executive officer, said the company is expanding its non-Windows business, including Android-based tablets and smartphones, as well as the web-centric Chromebook laptops promoted by Google Inc.
      Non-Windows business is expected to make up 10-12 percent of Acer’s revenue this year and 20-30 percent next year, Wang said.
      Acer reported an operating loss of NT$613 million (US$20.47 million) for the second quarter – following six consecutive quarters of operating profit — because of increasing investment and the rising cost of memory chips.
      For the first six months of 2013, the Taiwanese PC maker’s consolidated revenue fell 18.9 percent year-on-year to NT$181.35 billion, resulting in an operating loss of NT$585 million and earnings per share of NT$0.06.
      British bank Barclays Plc maintained its “equal-weight” rating on Acer shares and cut its earnings per share estimates by 5.4 percent for 2013, and by 5.3 percent for 2014, forecasting a contraction in Acer’s sales and more competition pressure.
      “We expect Acer’s sales to continue to be weak and do not expect any further momentum currently,” Kirk Yang, head of Asia ex-Japan Tech Hardware Research at Barclays, said in a research note dated Aug. 6.
      “We expect Acer will face a more competitive situation in the tablet and notebook segments in the near term and we don’t see it having an obvious plan in place to react,” said Yang, who reduced his price target on the stock from NT$24 to NT$23.
      Acer shares ended 3.97 percent lower at NT$20.55 Thursday on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

      August 30, 2013: Talk of the Day — Will Acer be sold or merged?

      Acer Inc., Taiwan’s leading computer vendor, has seen its share price plunge to historically low levels in recent months.
      Market sources said earlier this week that investment banks are planning to broker a merger between Acer and one of two major rivals — Taiwan’s AsusTek Computer or China’s Lenovo Group.
      Acer founder Stan Shih said Thursday that he had an open mind toward such an overture.
      “I would let nature take its course,” Shih said, but he added that no investment bankers have approached him for such talks.
      In charting the company’s future development strategy or direction, Shih said, the rights and interests of all stakeholders, including employees, shareholders and society at large, should be priority concerns.
      Shih has retired and is no longer involved in Acer’s management, but he remains the company’s largest shareholder, controlling 2.64 percent of its shares. His wife has a similar sized stake in the company.
      Shares of Acer gained 2.57 percent to close at NT$19.95 Friday.
      The following are excerpts from local media coverage of Shih’s views on Acer’s future:
      Economic Daily News:
      Acer spokesman Henry Wang said Thursday that the company has never thought about a merger with any other corporation.
      “We are restructuring and streamlining our operations, and focusing more on innovating,” Wang said.
      While the company is tapping into the ever-expanding tablet market to help compensate for declining PC sales, it has also launched a new generation of laptops and desktops, including an ultra-thin laptop-tablet hybrid, he said.
      In the past, some foreign analysts have suggested that Taiwan’s two leading PC makers — Acer and AsusTek — should merge to expand their operating scale and enhance their international competitiveness.
      Acer Chairman J.T. Wang also said previously that Lenovo, which has emerged as the world’s second largest PC vendor and has a comprehensive portfolio of products, proposed a few years ago to buy out Acer, but Wang said he politely rejected such an offer.
      On Thursday, Stan Shih was asked to comment on reports that investment banks intend to mediate an Acer-AsusTek merger or an Acer-Lenovo merger.
      Shih said Acer is not a company that can be evaluated solely in financial terms.
      “Capitalists tend to assess things simply in monetary terms, but Acer has something invaluable,” Shih said.
      As one of Taiwan’s few international brands, Shih said, Acer has come a long way and overcome numerous challenges in building up its brand recognition.
      “I hope local people will give Acer more encouragement and support,” Shih said. (Aug. 30, 2013).
      China Times:
      Shih said a company’s share price is not the sole indicator used to assess a company’s value.
      “I have not been bothered by fluctuations in Acer’s share price,” Shih said Thursday when chairing an event marking the start of applications for this year’s Acer Digital Award.
      But he added that the PC industry is changing rapidly.
      “We should let nature take its course. If somebody wants to take over Acer at a price beyond what anybody could imagine and create an even better brand based on it, why we should resist such a deal,” he said. (Aug. 30, 2013).

      May 11, 2013: Acer, Asustek upbeat about Windows 8 market reception

      Taiwan-based Acer Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc., two of the world’s leading personal computer vendors, are optimistic about the market reception of Microsoft Corp.’s latest operating system Windows 8, which is to be revamped, market sources said Saturday.
      Acer Chairman J.T. Wang said Microsoft is eager to communicate with hardware device providers like Acer in an attempt to improve the Windows 8 functions and make the platform more user-friendly.
      Amid lackluster market reception since the new Microsoft operating system was launched at the end of October 2012, the U.S.-based software giant said it is planning to revamp the OS so that consumers will learn how to use the new platform more quickly.
      The plan to launch a new version of Windows 8 was announced after Tami Reller, Microsoft’s chief marketing and financial officer, conceded that it was not easy for consumers to get used to the platform.
      Many business users have been urging Microsoft to restore the “Start” button in its latest OS. In the earlier Windows versions, the icon appears in the lower-left corner of the computer screen, but is not visible in the latest software.
      To stir up buying interest, Microsoft has lowered its royalties by US$20-US$30 (NT$600-NT$1,000) on touch notebook computers 11.6 inches or smaller, while offering incentives to distributors of Windows 8 tablet computers.
      Market sources said Microsoft is expected to cut its royalties on Windows 8 tablet computers so that they can be sold at around US$199-US$349 and thus make them more competitive in the market.
      Wang said the changes in Microsoft’s strategy will have a positive effect on market reception of the Windows 8 OS and also on the future development of the PC industry.
      Acer said that with touch devices becoming the mainstream in the PC market, it will continue to unveil tablets, touch ultrabook computers, and combination PCs and smartphones, all running either Windows 8 or Google’s Android operating system.
      Meanwhile, Asustek said Windows 8 is a good product, although some consumers have not gotten used to it. Once Microsoft revamps the OS, sales of Windows 8 mobile devices will pick up, Asustek said.

      June 3, 2013: COMPUTEX: Acer unveils new product lines

      imageAcer Chairman J.T. Wang (left) holds the 8-inch Iconia W3,
      and Chief Marketing Officer Michael Birkin holds the 5.7-inch Liquid S1.

      Taiwanese computer maker Acer Inc. unveiled a series of new products Monday, including an 8-inch Windows tablet and a 5.7-inch phablet.

      At an international press conference held under the theme of “Redefining Technology Through Touch,” Acer showcased a wide array of its latest products one day ahead of Asia’s largest computer trade show.

      The 8-inch Iconia W3, one of the first 8-inch Windows tablets on the market, weighs 500 grams and is less than half an inch thick. With a battery life of eight hours, the device can beam out 720p video playback on a 1,280 x 800 display. It also comes with an optional full-size keyboard.

      The company also displayed its first phone-tablet hybrid product, the Liquid S1, with the aim of gaining traction in the fast-growing hybrid market.

      The new quad-core phablet features a 5.7-inch 720p display, weighs 195 grams and runs on Google’s Android 4.2 operating system.

      Acer projected that the global phablet market will grow to about 10 million units in 2013, up from between 7 million and 8 million units last year.

      June 3, 2013: COMPUTEX: Acer unveils new product lines (update)

      Acer Chairman J.T. Wang said on the sidelines of the launch ceremony that touch technology applications have become all the rage, and this will continue in the future.

      “It’s all about touch,” he said, adding that the launch of the new products is expected to meet consumer demand.

      4. The road which lead to Acer downfall:

      Acer press release:

      March 31, 2011: Acer CEO and President Gianfranco Lanci resigns – With immediate effect

      Gianfranco Lanci is appointed President of Acer Inc., effective January 2005 … Current President, J.T. Wang, will step into the role of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) as Stan Shih retires from Acer at the end of this year. The new positions are effective from 1 January 2005. Lanci’s designation marks Acer’s appreciation for his outstanding performance in the European market, including his management style and successful business model – which may now extend to the Acer group worldwide. …
      Acer’s Lanci Takes Over CEO Role [IDG News Service, June 13, 2008] … Gianfranco Lanci, who came to Acer from Texas Instruments (TI) when Acer bought the TravelMate laptop PC business from TI in 1997, will add the CEO position to his current role as president of Acer.
      The company’s laptop business has been a driving force in its double-digit growth over the past few years and helped catapult Acer into the number-three spot in the PC industry.
      J.T. Wang, the current chairman of Acer, relinquished his CEO title at Acer but took on the title of Acer Group CEO on Friday, Acer said in a statement.
      Wang took over as chairman at Acer from company founder Stan Shih several years ago, after Acer split itself into three distinct companies in order to separate its branded business from its contract manufacturing operations. Acer took over as the branded company, while Wistron took most of the PC-related contract manufacturing and BenQ took on mobile phone and PC-related work.
      Shih retired from Acer in December 2004.
      Acer CEO and President Gianfranco Lanci has resigned from the company, with immediate effect. Acer Chairman J.T. Wang takes acting role in the interim. The company has commenced with the planning of organizational and operational adjustments for the sustainable future of Acer.
      The resignation was approved at a meeting of Acer’s Board of Directors today, and the company has communicated internally with its worldwide employees.

      On the company’s future development, Lanci held different views from a majority of the board members, and could not reach a consensus following several months’ of dialog. They placed different levels of importance on scale, growth, customer value creation, brand position enhancement, and on resource allocation and methods of implementation.

      The change does not affect current operations which are functioning as normal. Acer’s strong management team of multi-nationals has been well-informed and is committed to overseeing and implementing the company strategies, as does the amicable company relations with industry partners persist. Acer will continue to push for globalization, follow its multi-brand and channel business model, develop competitive products and services, and foster closer relations with key vendors and channel partners.

      Acer Chairman, J.T. Wang expresses, “The personal computer remains the core of our business. We have built up a strong foundation and will continue to expand within, especially in the commercial PC segment. In addition, we are stepping into the new mobile device market, where we will invest cautiously and aim to become one of the leading players.”

      “In this new ICT industry,” continued Wang, “Acer needs a period of time for adjustment. With the spirit of entrepreneurship, we will face new challenges and look to the future with confidence.”

      In his role as President and CEO, Lanci has contributed significantly toward Acer’s growth. The company expresses its true appreciation for Lanci’s efforts and wishes him all the best in his future endeavors.

      April 19, 2011: Acer appoints Jim Wong as Corporate President – Through teamwork, company to face challenges and embrace opportunities of the new ICT industry

      Acer Inc.’s board of directors has approved the candidacy of Jim Wong as the new Corporate President, with immediate effect. Wong previously held the positions of corporate senior vice president and president of IT Products Group (ITGO). Together with Chairman and CEO, J.T. Wang, they will lead the company forward to embrace new challenges and opportunities in the new ICT age.

      Acer Chairman and CEO, J.T. Wang … “As the ICT industry shifts from single to multiple operating system platforms, it opens up new challenges as well as new opportunities. Acer needs a leader who is familiar with technology, as well as understands the market. We reviewed Jim’s potential and agreed he would fit well in the role.”

      The rapid growth from data-creation to data-consumption devices is increasing the ICT market scale and opening up new prospects. Acer will aggressively yet cautiously develop data-consumption products, tablet PCs and smartphones based on the solid foundation of the main PC business.

      Jim Wong, new corporate president of Acer states, “The IT industry is encountering a profound change. I foresee many new opportunities and am ready to face the challenges ahead. I will encourage teamwork throughout the company and work closely with the new management team. We are ready with a clear set of goals and action plans.”

      In the PC business, Acer will continue to seek volume/shipment growth, but we must optimize our multi-brand strategy by having clear differentiation of the brands’ positioning and create value for our customers. Concurrently, Acer shall focus on developing selective models for mobile devices to lay a solid foundation for the future.
      Three key principles have been defined by Acer’s new management to ensure successful decision making:

      • Promote the spirit of teamwork to enhance company’s overall competitiveness, and encourage closer communication between front-end and back-end management teams for better mutual understanding.
      • Simplify operational systems and processes to boost effectiveness and speed.
      • Strengthen corporate governance and enhance company sustainability.

      Wong joined Acer in 1986, with experience in sales, product marketing, product development, with a keen understanding of ODM supplier operations and the brand business. In 2001 when he took charge of the ITGO, he has been one of the core members of Acer’s top management team. In 2005 he was promoted to corporate senior vice president.

      Born in 1958, Wong holds a bachelor degree, majoring in mathematics from Soochow University in Taiwan, and an MBA from Emory University, Georgia, USA.  In 1999 he received Taiwan’s 17th Annual Management of Excellency Award.

      Acer ICONIA [press release, Nov 23, 2011]

      Not so long ago mobile computing devices with touch screens were only found in science fiction. Now Acer presents ICONIA, a new concept device set to add a brand new tablet experience, combining the versatility of a conventional 14” form factor with a unique dual-screen layout and highly intuitive all-point multi-touch functionality, which means you can use all the fingers of your hands to navigate ICONIA.

      If you are looking for a different and innovative approach to personal computing, look no further. With its two all-point multi-touch displays Acer ICONIA offers an enhanced content consumption experience and brings the interaction with the tablet to a new level.

      Multimedia, entertainment, communication, web browsing and office productivity seamlessly flow across the dual screen, allowing users to set the best scenario for what they are doing. To improve readability of web sites or documents, the window can be spread across both screens. But the dual screen also means you can do one thing in one screen and something else entirely on the other: you can browse a website on the top screen and view the contents of your favourite folder on the bottom one or you can watch a video on the top screen and check out your multimedia library in the other.

      “We took this insight and created a range of easy to use devices with touch technology including Smartphones, Notebooks, AIO PCs, Tablet and our latest addition, the ICONIA Touchbook: this level of commitment to touch technology is something no other PC vendor can compete with.” states Jim Wong Acer Inc. Vice President and ITGO President. “The Intel® Core™ i5 processor together with our experience with touch technology has allowed us to completely remap the user experience to create a far more natural interaction with our devices.

      April 19, 2011: Acer establishes Touch Business Group to enhance development of new mobile devices

      • Acer Corporate President Jim Wong to lead Touch Business Group
      • Campbell Kan to lead PC Global Operations
      • Walter Deppeler to lead Chief Marketing Office

      Acer Inc. announces organizational adjustments in separating the back-end product-line operations into two independent entities: Touch Business Group (Touch BG) and PC Global Operations (PCGO) lead by new Acer corporate president, Jim Wong, and Campbell Kan, former VP of the smart handheld business unit, respectively. In addition, Acer announces new functions for mid- and long-term business planning and operation analysis.

      To make significant inroads in the mobile device business, Acer has reorganized the former IT product global operations into two independent entities. The newly founded Touch BG comprises of the former tablet PC and smartphone teams, while the PCGO consists of the main PC product lines.

      The Touch BG shall be led by new Acer corporate president, Jim Wong, and president of Eten Information Systems, Simon Hwang, concurrently appointed deputy president of Touch BG.

      Acer president, Jim Wong, states, “Touch/mobile devices open up a host of new opportunities. They form Acer’s new business and growth engine for the future. To focus on this market, we saw the need to allocate sufficient resources, and devise a new management structure different from the PC business specifically for this line of business.”

      New Functions
      Acer also creates three new functions deemed necessary for company’s competitive development, they are: Chief Marketing Office (CMO) – responsible for brand position and marketing strategy; Chief Technology Office (CTO) – responsible for mid to long term planning and integration of technologies; and Operation Analysis Office (OAO) – for studying and analyzing company business models and financial affairs.

      Senior corporate VP and EMEA president, Walter Deppeler, shall concurrently serve as CMO, while Tiffany Huang, AVP of supply chain operations will concurrently oversee the OAO. The CTO will be jointly led by former VP of quality and service, Jackson Lin, former CTO of products development, R.C. Chang, and former VP of technology center, Arif Maskatia.

      May 26, 2011: Acer’s manufacturing base in Chongqing commences operation – Ceremony to mark milestone achievement joined by Mayor Huang Qifan and Acer President Jim Wongise competitiveness on a global scale.

      Acer’s new global IT manufacturing center in Chongqing has commenced production. Today a ceremony attended by Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan and Acer President Jim Wong was held to mark this achievement. The city of Chongqing in western China offers excellent infrastructure including land and air transportation, and stable manpower supply. The newly operational manufacturing center is expected to enhance Acer’s worldwide business and logistics to boost overall competitiveness.

      Acer President, Jim Wong, remarked, “Our decision to go west in China is a global strategy. Since December last year, the steps in setting up this manufacturing base have been smooth, enabling our production start in May. Acer is extremely grateful for the support of the Chongqing government and our manufacturing partners to make this a possibility.”

      “Major OEM companies have already set foot in Chongqing and all will begin shipping by the second half of this year,” continued Wong. “Key component suppliers have also set up presence here to create a complete supply chain. To begin with, we will produce our notebook and netbook PCs in Chongqing and gradually expand our manufacturing volume. By the end of 2011, 30-40% of our total notebook and netbook PCs will be produced here.”

      June 1, 2011: Acer Chairman & CEO to relinquish his remuneration

      Acer Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang is taking responsibility of the one-time write-off totaling US$150 million by relinquishing total remuneration from his position as director of the company board, as well as employee bonus of  2010.

      With Acer’s substantial loss in write-off, Wang deeply feels regretful of the current situation and will dedicate his efforts fully to investigating the reasons behind the loss and to improving internal management.

      July 18, 2011: Dave Chan appointed General Manager of China Operations, Acer Touch Business Group – Focus on penetration into China touch mobile device market

      Global IT industry veteran, Dave Chan, has been appointed General Manager of China Operations, Acer Touch Business Group. Under Chan’s leadership, Acer expects to accelerate penetration into China’s smartphone and tablet PC market.

      Chan has been working in the high-tech industry for more than 20 years, accumulating a wealth of experience in the consumer/retail business and operations with extensive geographic experiences ranging from global, regional (Asia) and country (China). Prior to this, he served as senior official for eight years at a first-tier IT company, responsible for notebooks, smartphones and tablet PCs in China.

      Acer Corporate President, Jim Wong, said, “Touch mobile device is Acer’s new strategic business. While China’s huge IT market, with unique applications and customer segment, presents great business potential. To address these specific needs, we established a separate business group overseeing the China touch mobile device market and will allocate the needed human resource.”

      “Dave will lead Acer’s touch business development team in China,” continued Wong, “cooperate with local telcos and operators on R&D, software, sales and services. His joining ensures that Acer has substantial leadership to steer this new business forward in China.”

      To make significant inroads in the mobile device business, Acer announced in April the newly founded Touch Business Group comprising of the former tablet PC and smartphone teams, and directly overseen by Wong.
      Chan holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University and MBA from Santa Clara University.

      July 18, 2011: Acer sets up global R&D center in Chongqing – Focus on smart handheld application software and services

      A new global R&D center, Acer Intellectual (Chongqing) Co. Ltd., was inaugurated today to enhance Acer’s development in smartphones and tablet PCs. The center shall cooperate with Chongqing municipal government and China Mobile Ltd. in researching and developing smart handheld devices as well as related software and services.

      An inaugural ceremony was held today and joined by Chongqing government officials, during which Acer also signed an agreement with Chongqing Economic and IT Commission (CQEIC) and China Mobile’s Chongqing subsidiary (Chongqing Mobile) to jointly research and develop smart handheld devices, including smartphones and tablet PCs, application software and services.

      …

      To begin with, Acer will invest US$4 million in Acer Intellectual (Chongqing) Co. The center, led by Acer Corporate President Jim Wong, will also focus on the smart handheld user behavior study in the China market.

      Acer’s R&D taskforce has already begun collaborating with Chongqing Mobile and local IT companies to successfully develop software applications for Android based TD (time domain) smartphones; the applications are used by Chongqing civil servants. Further on, together with Chongqing government, the center will develop smart handheld mobile terminals to provide more value-added services.

      January 8, 2012: Acer Unveils World’s Thinnest Ultrabook: Aspire S5

      “The Ultrabook is much more than just a product segment,” said Jim Wong, president of Acer Inc. “It’s a new trend that will become the mainstream for mobile PCs, and customers will see the unique features gradually extended across Acer’s notebook family.”

      January 8, 2012: AcerCloud Connects All Personal Devices Securely for Anytime, Anywhere Access to Digital Media and Data

      Acer today previewed its upcoming AcerCloud, which securely connects all personal smart devices for anytime, anywhere access. Featuring Acer Always Connect technology, users can retrieve multimedia and data files anytime, even when their main PC is in sleep (standby/hibernation) mode. Users can enjoy these advantages knowing that their information is stored and transferred securely via strong encryption and authentication. Bringing users tremendous functionality and value, Acer will include the AcerCloud, without additional cost, on all new Acer consumer PCs.

      Acer reduces the complexities of today’s fast-paced lifestyles by developing solutions that enable devices to communicate, simplifying the process of content sharing. With the ever-growing number of smart digital devices, users need to share and back up their multimedia and data files in a simple, smart way.

      …

      Acer Inc. President Jim Wong stated, “AcerCloud not only provides the simplicity and efficiency when accessing and sharing data, but it’s also free with a new Acer PC and gives our users peace-of-mind, knowing that their data is safely transferred in a personal cloud space.”

      AcerCloud will be bundled on all Acer consumer PCs starting Q2 2012. It will support all Android devices, while future support is planned for Windows-based devices. The service will be available in America, Europe, Asia and China.

      August 30, 2012: Acer Steps Up Marketing, Engages Red Peak Group and Appoints Michael Birkin as Chief Marketing Officer

      To energize and strengthen Acer’s global marketing organization, Acer will engage Red Peak Group, a global marketing services firm, and appoint Red Peak Chairman Michael Birkin as Acer Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). This strategic move is aimed at strengthening Acer as a marketing-oriented company.

      Red Peak will assign Birkin and other Red Peak members to perform related marketing functions and services for Acer. And as CMO, Birkin will lead the global brand marketing team, and report directly to Acer’s chairman and CEO, commencing October 1, 2012.

      According to Acer Chairman and CEO, J.T. Wang, “Our key objectives for Red Peak are to enhance Acer’s marketing strengths and help steer the existing company mindset.”

      “In the product development stages, we will place marketing ahead of R&D and design,” said Wang. “Our precise understanding of customers’ needs will lead the way in products and services development. We will build an end-to-end marketing environment and enhance our marketing-oriented mindset.”

      Birkin is regarded as one of the world’s most respected brand strategists and marketing experts. During his career he served as the CEO of Interbrand Group, the brand consultancy, and worked in various capacities at Omnicom, the global advertising and marketing communications services group. In 2010, Birkin founded the Red Peak Group, a marketing services company with offices in New York, London and Los Angeles, offering a full range of services including brand consulting and design.

      In addition to the marketing organization and personnel changes, the incumbent CMO Walter Deppeler, has been assigned to lead a newly established marketing committee as Chairman, responsible for integrating Acer’s global branding and marketing strategy.

      June 4, 2012: Acer Unveils Windows® 8 PC Lineup: Ultrabooks™, Tablets, and AIO Desktops – Creating a world of explorers through transformational user experiences

      Acer today announces its series of Windows 8-based products, which includes the premium Aspire S7 Ultrabook™, ICONIA W Series tablets, and Aspire U Series all-in-one (AIO) desktops, all featuring innovative ergonomic designs and appealing beauty that deliver greater convenience and delight to the overall user experience.
      “It is a watershed moment for Acer,” says J.T. Wang, Chairman and CEO of Acer Inc. “Acer has always been committed to breaking the barriers between people and technology and the leading design of these products, when coupled with the Windows® 8 touch functions, will provide transformational experiences for users whether they are creating important output or simply being entertained.”
      Jim Wong, Corporate President of Acer Inc. comments, “Acer collaborated closely with Microsoft Corp. and has taken the lead to engineer new products that will be great with Windows® 8, demonstrating our product development efficiencies and taking advantage of our ability to provide an enhanced and satisfying computing experience. By focusing on ergonomics and style, we are addressing key consumer demands.”
      Wong continues: “Interaction between human beings and computers should be easy rather than complex. In our view, the touchscreen experience enabled by Windows® 8 is a massive step forward – simply because it makes computing more intuitive by offering users a backward in interface. We understand Windows® 8 innovation and benefits and by utilizing Intel’s architecture and platform performance on our products, we believe we will provide users a better touch experience across devices for both consumer and commercial products.”
      “Microsoft and Acer have been working together on new devices for Windows® 8, and it’s great to see the progress Acer is making,” says Steven Guggenheimer, Corporate Vice President, OEM Division, Microsoft Corp. “We expect customers to have a great experience using the combination of Windows® 8 and the new hardware designs from Acer.”
      “Intel and Acer continue to focus on innovation and collaboration delivering engaging and secure user experiences,” says Kirk Skaugen, Vice President and General Manager, PC Client Group of Intel Corp. “Combined with the increased responsiveness of Intel’s 3rd generation Intel Core processor, new breakthrough capabilities possible with future Microsoft Windows® 8, and the added flexibility of touch, the Acer Aspire Ultrabook™ will provide a magnificent experience for users.”
      Wong says further, “At CES we announced Acer’s new brand positioning, the visible statement of which is to explore beyond limits. Today’s announcement is the most significant yet in our goal to create a modern day explorer in everyone. Our new products are 100% designed and created to enable anyone to accomplish more whether they be an individual or a business.”
      In the development of the new product lineup, Acer has been working even more closely with Microsoft and Intel.
      PRODUCT INFORMATION
      The Aspire S7 Ultrabook™ — the premium model in the S Series — boasts a sleek aluminum unibody design. The 13.1-inch model is currently the thinnest Full HD touch Ultrabook™ and features glossy tempered glass, while the 11.6-inch model is the smallest Full HD touch-enabled Ultrabook™. Both devices are kitted out with the innovative Acer Twin Air cooling system for best thermal comfort, as well as a light-sensing keyboard that adjusts its backlight to facilitate typing, even in low light.
      The ICONIA W510 and W700 tablets have raised touch functionality to the next level. The W510 is equipped with a 10.1-inch display and has tri-mode touch, which allows users to touch, type and view. It also delivers up to 18 hours of battery life and headlines Always On, Always Connect technology. The W700 is the best-performing Windows tablet with a versatile cradle that is adjustable for different viewing requirements while offering data storage expansion and an additional battery. Sporting an 11.6-inch Full HD touchscreen, this tablet stuns with high-quality 1080p images.
      Aspire U Series AIO desktops are also available in two sizes. The 27-inch 7600U has an ultra-slim 35 mm profile and a gorgeous Full HD edge-to-edge screen and Dolby® Surround Sound. This AIO features multi-user touch, and can be tilted from 0 to 90 degrees. Furthermore, the screen can swivel to all sides when laid flat. The 23-inch 5600U is the slimmest AIO PC that can tilt from 30 to 85 degrees, enhancing personal touch use. Both models have leading ergonomic designs, and a slim, stylish finish that complements interior decor.

      October 30, 2012: Acer Aspire S7 Series The Thinnest and Lightest “Touch & Type” Ultrabooks™

      First previewed at Computex Taipei, the Acer Aspire S7 Series, the thinnest and lightest Ultrabooks™, has been hailed as one of the most exciting Windows 8-based touch Ultrabooks to launch. It was also featured prominently in Microsoft’s launch event in New York and highlighted as one of the best PCs ever made. The positive reviews have been unparalleled.

      As thin as a smartphone, the S7 is an iconic combination of power and beauty. The use of straight lines, glossy white glass, electroluminescent lighting and anodized aluminum have culminated in an Ultrabook that champions cutting-edge technology and innovative design. The dual torque hinge and Acer Green Instant On / Always Connect features ensure the ultimate in control and seamless usability.

      “Acer took a fresh approach to the design and development of the Aspire S7, using premium construction methods and materials,” said Jim Wong, corporate president of Acer. “The high level of engineering and design quality we set for the S7 was achieved by placing the user experience as our top design priority, and by our ongoing commitment to introducing technologies into our products that truly complement human behavior, and stimulate curious and progressive thought and action.”

      November 12, 2012: Acer America’s New C7 Chromebook: Secure, Speedy and Simple

      Editor’s Summary:

      • Available for purchase starting tomorrow in the U.S. through Google Play, Best Buy stores and BestBuy.com at an affordable $199
      • Provides hassle-free computing with automatic security and software updates
      • Great for use as an additional home computer
      • Includes built-in apps for productivity, collaboration and entertainment

      Acer America today debuts its new Acer C7 Chromebook, its next-generation mobile computer that runs Google’s Chrome operating system and is priced at a low $199.

      The new Acer C7 Chromebook is the ideal additional laptop for families, students and business people that need a fast, easy and secure way to get online to do their computing in the cloud, such as using Gmail, keeping up on social networks, shopping, and paying bills.

      “Today’s computer users are doing more online heightening the need for enhanced security, quicker online access and an easy-to-use interface,” Jim Wong, corporate president, Acer Inc. “The Acer C7 Chromebook provides all this at an affordable price, making it the right choice for families and students on a budget as well as anyone who wants a new or second mobile PC for web-based computing.”

      “The core of Google’s Chromebook vision is creating a better, more simple computing experience and making it available to everyone,” said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president, Chrome and Apps, Google. “We’re excited about the Acer C7 Chromebook, the newest addition to the Chromebook family. The Acer C7 delivers a hassle-free computing experience with the speed, security and simplicity that users expect of Chromebooks built in.”

      December 10, 2012: Acer Appoints Tiffany Huang President of PC Global Operations – Incumbent president, Campbell Kan, to serve as special assistant to Acer chairman

      Acer announces the appointment of Tiffany Huang to become the president of Personal Computer Global Operations (PCGO), reporting to the corporate president, Jim Wong. Huang shall replace Campbell Kan who will serve as special assistant to the chairman, J.T. Wang. Both appointments shall take effect from January 1, 2013.

      Kan has held key positions within Acer’s IT products global operations over the past twelve years, and is accredited for his excellent management and contribution to the mobile PC business. With his extensive knowhow, Kan shall take charge of key projects assigned by Acer chairman where he can lend his expertise for the future of the company.
      With her latest appointment, Huang leaves her post as associate vice president of Supply Chain Operations Business Unit after twelve years in this field. In the past year, she has also held positions in the Operations Analysis Office responsible for analyzing and strategizing corporate operations, and the Strategic Demand Planning Business Unit for demand and material planning.
      During her career at Acer, Huang has demonstrated clear potential with her leadership quality, execution and communication skills, and experience in cross cultural and cross functions. Her sense of business acumen, global insight, matched by accurate end-to-end projections on many occasions deemed her to be the ideal candidate to take the position as president of PCGO, as Kan assumes his new post.
      Huang joined Acer in 1988 in the legal division dealing with intellectual property rights. From 1997 to 2001 she served as director of operations management at Acer’s U.S. operations. In 2001 she returned to the Taipei headquarters and was later promoted to associate vice president of supply chain operations until the latest appointment.
      Born in 1964, Huang has a Bachelor of Science degree in Law from Taiwan’s Chung-Hsing University.

      January 7, 2013: Acer Extends AcerCloud to Top Three Operating Systems, Making it Easy to Share Files and Media among Windows, iOS and Android Devices

      Acer today announced cross-platform support for AcerCloud, the company’s file sharing and media management solution, free to Acer customers. Consumers can now share, retrieve and enjoy their multimedia and data files using a variety of computing devices, regardless of which operating system they are running – Windows, Android or iOS.

      AcerCloud uses the free space on a PC’s hard drive as cloud storage space.  Users simply designate one of their PCs as their “Cloud PC,” enabling them to use the available hard drive space on their own PC, giving them security and full control over their storage needs.  And unlike other cloud solutions, consumers won’t receive constant reminders about exceeding capacity with solicitations to pay for more storage.

      “With AcerCloud, Acer now supports free file sharing between all of the key mobile devices, adding tremendous value to Acer customers,” said Acer President, Jim Wong.  “AcerCloud greatly simplifies our customers’ ability to manage all of their digital assets across all of their devices, regardless of platform.”

      Acer, Asustek actively marketing cloud computing solutions [DIGITIMES, July 25, 2013]

      Acer and Asustek have been pushing forward in marketing hardware/software-integrated cloud computing solutions focusing on educational applications and web storage, respectively, according to the companies.

      Acer has integrated its servers with software used in eDC, its electronic information management center, into cloud computing solutions and promoted sales through cooperation of system integration providers, the company indicated. The cloud computing solutions are mainly used for educational purposes, with procurement by local governments being the major source of business, Acer noted. In addition to contracts from schools in Taiwan and Thailand, Acer has been marketing products in Nanjing City, eastern China, and Chongqing City, western China, and plans to tap the North America and Europe markets, Acer noted.

      Asustek has its subsidiary, Asus Cloud, responsible for operating its cloud computing business. In addition to Taiwan-based Cathay Financial Holdings and Taishin Financial Holding, Asus Cloud-developed storage solutions have been adopted by the National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) under the government-sponsored National Applied Research Laboratories, Asus Cloud CEO Peter Wu said. Asus Cloud will offer a storage solution of 1PB in total capacity for NCHC, with more than 10TB to come into use in the second half of 2013, Wu indicated. In addition, Asus Cloud has signed with the government of Chongqing City to develop cloud computing platforms for education, civic services and by small- to medium-size enterprises in the city, Wu said.

      June 3, 2013: Acer Enhances its Flagship Ultrabook™, the Aspire S7

      “We designed the S7 to be the best touch Ultrabook in the world, bar none,” said Jim Wong, Acer Corporate President. “We listened carefully to users to find substantial ways to make it even better.” The re-engineered S7 delivers improved battery life of up to 7 hours, a 33% increase from its predecessor. Its new light-sensing EL backlit keyboard is also refined, with a deeper keystroke for more natural and comfortable typing. Plus, thanks to 2nd generation Acer TwinAir cooling technology, the noise at maximum load is more than 20% lower than the previous S7, keeping the system quiet and cool. … The new Aspire S7 will be available in Q3 2013.

      The end of the road announcements:

      Acer Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang Tenders Resignation; Corporate President Jim Wong to Succeed as CEO – Wang to remain in chairmanship to fulfill tenure as Acer begins a comprehensive restructuring and transformation [press release, Nov 5, 2013]

      Acer announces that the resignation of J.T. Wang, Chairman and CEO, has been approved by its board of directors. Wang shall remain in chairmanship until the end of his tenure next June. The Board and The Search Committee also agreed that Corporate President Jim Wong will succeed Wang as the new CEO from January 1, 2014. A comprehensive restructuring plan has been formulated by the Acer management team, and without delay, the Board will commence with its corporate transformation.
      J.T. Wang, chairman and CEO of Acer, said, “Acer encountered many complicated and harsh challenges in the past few years. With the consecutive poor financial results, it is time for me to hand over the responsibility to a new leadership team to path the way for a new era.”
      Acer’s board of directors stated, “We are very grateful for Wang’s contribution and hard work. The past two to three years have been extremely tough for Acer due to the rapidly changing industry and market conditions. We fully respect Wang’s decision to step down; however, in the interest of ensuring company stability and a smooth transition during this latest restructuring and transformation, we have asked J.T. to remain to complete his tenure as Chairman which ends in June 2014.”
      Wang elaborated, “Together with the management team, we have crafted a far-reaching plan for Acer’s transformation. I wish to thank the board members for their support and to Jim for assuming the CEO duties. I feel optimistic toward Acer’s future. The management team promises to carry out the internal restructuring and will work closely with the Board on the corporate transformation.”
      Acer’s Board has set up a Transformation Advisory Committee with board member [founder] Stan Shih as Chairman and Acer co-founder George Huang as executive secretary. The committee will propose changes in the company vision, strategy, and execution plans for the Board’s approval. They will work with the management team to carry out the transformation to increase shareholder value. To support new development needs, the Board has approved the issue of 136 million new common shares for a capital increase in cash (approximately 4.8% of total shares).
      Stan Shih stated, “After I retired from Acer I shifted my attention to promoting public interests. But when J.T. tendered his resignation, the Board turned to me for help. In consideration of personal social responsibility and for Acer’s onward sustainability, I agreed to take on the duty to help the management team with a smooth handover during this transition period.”
      Shih added, “After making structural adjustments, we will introduce more competitive products within the existing PC, tablet, and smartphone business and stabilize our market share. This will be the basis of our transformation and for developing new business opportunities.”
      Acer’s personnel and business restructuring plans include reducing manpower, product plan termination with related product tooling and legal fees, resulting in a one-time cost of US$150M which is expected to be reported in the Q4’13 financial results. Acer will cut its worldwide employees by 7% resulting in OPEX savings of US$100M annually from 2014.

      Acer Q3’13 Financial Results: Consolidated Revenue NT$92.15B (US$3.11B), Operating Loss NT$2.57B (US$86.61M), Intangible Asset Impairment NT$9.94B (US$335.13M), PAT NT$-13.12B (US$-442.19M), EPS NT$-4.82 [press release, Nov 5, 2013]

      Acer’s financial results for Q3 2013, approved by its Board of Directors, are: Consolidated Revenue of NT$92.15B (US$3.11B), up 3.1% quarter-over-quarter and down 11.8% year-over-year; an Operating Loss of NT$2.57B (US$86.61M). In addition, due to a non-cash related intangible asset impairment of NT$9.94B (US$335.12M), profit after tax was NT$-13.12B (US$-442.19M), and earnings per share was NT$-4.82.
      Q3’s operating loss was mainly due to the gross margin impact of gearing up for the Windows 8.1 sell in and the related management of inventory. In addition, in Q3, there were one time compensation payments related to the long standing eMachines consumers litigation. This is now settled.
      The intangible asset impairment loss, which includes trademarks and goodwill, is NT$9.94B (US$335.13M).This impairment, which covers the Gateway, Packard Bell, Founder, iGware and ETen brands, is made in accordance with IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) and is reflective of changes in business strategy. The impairment is a non-cash charge and has no impact on Acer’s business operation and working capital.
      Acer’s consolidated revenue for the first three quarters is NT$273.50B (US$9.22B), down 16.6% year-over-year; operating losses for this period are NT$3.15B (US$106.3M). Due to the impact of the intangible asset impairment of NT$9.94B (US$335.13M), PAT is NT$-12.95B (US$-436.42M), and EPS is NT$-4.76. After the impairment of intangible assets, Acer’s net value per share is NT$23.1.
      Looking at Q4, due to the adjustment on brand strategy, shipments for Acer’s notebooks, tablet PCs and Chromebooks are expected to decrease by 10% compared to Q3, however, the gross margin is expected to improve.
      Notes:

      • The spot rate as of November 5, 2013 was used — US$1: NT$29.67.
      • Acer Inc. consolidated revenue includes revenues from other companies in which Acer Inc. has 50% or more ownership, and already deducts any revenues between Acer Inc. and these companies to avoid double-counting.

      Leading edge Nokia phablets for both entertainment and productivity: Lumia 1320 targeting the masses at $339, and Lumia 1520 the imaging conscious business users and individuals at $749

      October 26, 2013 1:40 pm / 1 Comment on Leading edge Nokia phablets for both entertainment and productivity: Lumia 1320 targeting the masses at $339, and Lumia 1520 the imaging conscious business users and individuals at $749

      This is my conclusion after carefully analyzing the announced products in all of their details. Only “imaging consciousness” needs a little explanation in the very beginning because otherwise the substantial $410 pricing difference would be hard to understand. To illustrate the rationale for that I copied here an image currently available at http://refocus.nokia.com/ which shows that you can make everything in focus. By going to that address you will also be able to experience with the image there (likely a different one) and change the focus as you like. And this is only one aspect of all the benefits for “imaging conscious” business users and individuals willing to pay that $410 extra.

      image

      Another aspect is the Screen Test: Nokia Lumia 1520 versus Galaxy Note 3 [TheHandheldBlog YouTube channel, Oct 22, 2013] which is showing particularly well the Lumia 1520 advantage over the phablet market leader Samsung Galaxy Note 3:

      Nokia’s so proud of the display that they put in the Lumia 1520 that they had setup a demo zone that simulated the lighting available during various times of the day e.g. in sunlight, indoors etc and the idea was to see how the screen kept up with the changing lighting. Both devices were set to automatic maximum brightness, and this is how they stood up. Hint: The Nokia killed it.

      The Nokia World Nokia Lumia 1520 daylight visibility demo [WMPowerUser YouTube channel, Oct 22, 2013] is showing the advantage against the smartphone market leaders:

      The Nokia Lumia 1520 features a very bright screen with much reduced glare, which allows much improved visibility in daylight conditions, as demoed in a special light box at Nokia World against and iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4. All devices are at maximum brightness.

      To understand how “a very bright screen with much reduced glare” is uniquely achieved by Nokia, please read The leading ClearBlack display technology from Nokia [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 18, 2011 – May 8, 2012] post of mine.

      imageAs far as the opportunities for business customer are concerned Chris Weber, EVP Sales & Marketing at Nokia said that the opportunity is huge even in 2013:
      imageIn addition Nokia and Microsoft are uniquely positioned in that space because Nokia smartphones (Windows phones) are rated highest by business users etc. Watch his presentation in Replay Nokia World Abu Dhabi (the second webcast:) Breakout Sessions [Nokia Conversations, Oct 22, 2013], from [1:49:00].

      Now consider what one gets for a much lesser amount ($339) with Nokia Lumia 1320 unveiled at Nokia World Abu Dhabi [Maurizio Pesce YouTube channel, Oct 22, 2013]:

      [Note that the Lumia 1320 also has IPS LCD with ClearBlack display technology, just the resolution is lower: 1280 x 720 (HD) vs 1920 x 1080 (full HD) of the Lumia 1520.]

      While the latest innovations in functionality are shown quite well in the above video the most important quote from Nokia (because of its implication) is:

      Similar to the Lumia 1520 – and building on the affordability of the Lumia 520 – the new Nokia Lumia 1320 also features a 6-inch screen and a wealth of features at a lower price.

      And here is the Nokia Lumia 1520 first hands-on [Nokia YouTube channel, Oct 22, 2013] video for a kind of comparison (from Nokia itself):

      Be the first to see the stunning new Nokia Lumia 1520, which packs a full HD 6-inch display and a 20 megapixel PureView camera into a sleek polycarbonate shell. It’s also brings an exciting third row of tiles to boost your creativity and productivity, as well as the brand new Nokia Camera app. Find out more: http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/10/22/standing-tall-the-nokia-lumia-1520-and-lumia-1320/

      Technical similarities/differences between the two Nokia phablets could be seen in the below table of mine, which was compiled from Lumia 1320 & 1520 spec data + dev specs.image
      Regarding the similarity between the two devices the most important thing is the functionality which is 90% the same. The Lumia 1520 is just different with:
      – Multimicrophone uplink noise cancellation
      – HERE Drive+
      – Secure NFC (although in developer specs it is indicated for Lumia 1320 as well)
      – Public transportation routing guidance
      – HERE Transit
      – Panorama (That is get the bigger picture with Nokia’s easy-to-use Panorama app. Simply take your pictures and the app automatically stitches them into a picture-perfect view. Once you’re done, share your panorama directly to Twitter and Facebook.)
      – Additional light sensitivities: ISO 1600, ISO 3200, ISO 4000
      + Nokia Refocus (as an application on top of that) illustrated in the very beginning of this post already

      The Nokia World Abu Dhabi 2013 [Red Robot – Intelligent Distribution YouTube channel,
      Oct 23, 2013] had certainly much wider set of new announcements:
      At Nokia World: Abu Dhabi, Nokia unveiled six new devices alongside new accessories, Nokia experiences and third-party developer applications.

      In order to understand the substantially higher price positioning for the Lumia 1520 please note that the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 LTE 32GB unlocked offering (which has nothing like the imaging functionality of Lumia 1520) has a U.S. retail price of $735.00-789.95+ on Amazon (not to speak of the 32GB Apple iPhone 5s with its $850-950+ price as a minimum). Here is a very recent, brief comparison:
      Nokia Lumia 1520 vs Samsung Galaxy Note 3 [Recombu YouTube channel, Oct 22, 2013]

      The underdog vs the prized champion – the Nokia Lumia 1520 vs the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. Two big phones but which has the biggest impact when places side by side?
      More Note 3 related information could be found in 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 of mine.

      Now The Nokia Lumia 1520 and the Arabian Peninsula [Nokia Conversations, Oct 23, 2013] post is describing quite clearly the ultimate advantage of Lumia 1520 as:

      The Nokia Lumia 1520 is very much the bigger brother of the Lumia 1020, sporting a 6-inch display.
      Although it only packs 20 megapixels against the 1020′s 41 megapixels, the results are no less stunning. “The image quality is fantastic” is [National Geographic photographer Stephen] Alvarez’s instant feedback, “every bit of the Lumia 1020′s”. The larger screen makes a difference, too.
      “It’s easier to frame because you can see the image much larger,” Alvarez says of the device’s size, “but it isn’t so large that it’s cumbersome”. When doing really careful compositions, Stephen believes the Lumia 1520 makes short work of such tasks, citing the screen as being “remarkable”.
      For a professional photographer, the ability to extract DNG (Digital Negative) image files from a device is crucial. Whether it’s to work further on the image in post-production, or whether to prove you have an un-tainted image (if you’re a journalist or gathering evidence, for example). With the Lumia 1520 comes support for DNG files, much to Stephen’s delight when he found out.
      Amateur and professional photographers alike benefit from the fact there is zero compression in the file. Pulling more detail out of a shadow is just one example Alvarez offers before pointing out that the file size is comparable to what he sees from his DSLR.

      Some additional advantages from Standing tall: The Nokia Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320 [Nokia Conversations, Oct 22, 2013] are described as:

      Lumia 1520 features Nokia Rich Recording with four microphones, providing directional stereo recording capability to capture distortion free audio from the preferred direction for clear, accurate sound. (We will have more information to share with you about the Lumia 1520’s audio capabilities soon.)
      …
      The Lumia 1520 is a genuine workhorse, too. It comes with Microsoft Office built in, so you can have the flexibility to work when you need to; and it includes a massive battery with integrated wireless charging (Qi compatible). This powerful combination means you can manage to easily log a whole day of work and enjoy entertainment like movies without worrying about finding a place to charge up.
      The ability to show a third column on the Start screen isn’t just about scaling the experience of Windows Phone 8. It really is about getting to you favorite apps faster with less scrolling. For instance, the email app now shows one additional row of content in the Live tile, right on the Start screen.
      Do you do a lot of video conferencing? The front-facing camera on the Lumia 1520 offers 1.2 HD 720p wide angle video so you’ll always look your best.
      And, with the new Papyrus app coming to Windows Phone for the first time, you can easily take handwritten notes on your Nokia Lumia 1520.
      …
      The Lumia 1520 features all the latest in display technology to make the beautiful six inch screen stand out, even in the brightest sunlight. With ClearBlack display technology, High Brightness Mode and assertive display technology by Apical, the screen offers a viewing experience to enjoy no matter what the light conditions are. And when winter rolls in, wearing gloves won’t prevent you from using the screen just as easily as before thanks to the super sensitive touch screen with Gorilla Glass 2.

      No wonder that in this Nokia Lumia 1520 Hands on and tour of Nokia’s latest phablet [funviz YouTube channel, Oct 24, 2013] 3d party video the display is touted as the big selling point of the device: “[0:19] That display is probably the best display I’ve ever seen on any digital device. [0:23]”

      he Lumia 1520 is Nokia’s high-end ‘phablet’ Windows Phone released in early November, 2013. Featuring a 6-inch 1080 display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.2GHz quad-core CPU, the Lumia 1520 is Nokia’s first Update 3 device featuring the Lumia ‘Black’ firmware, a rolling cover and a 20 MP camera with a f/2.0 lens. The device also has 32 GB of internal storage and it can take up to 64 GB of external memory (microSD). The Lumia 1520 has a massive 3400 mAh battery life for an estimated 25 hours talk time and 2GB of RAM, making it one of the more powerful Lumias to date. Compared to other Lumias, the 1520 also has 4 High-amplitude audio capture (HAAC) microphones on board to give it excellent audio fidelity on calls and while recording videos. The Lumia 1520 will also feature a new Refocus Lens and StoryTeller apps from Nokia and it comes in four colors, including yellow, white, black and glossy red.

      And don’t forget that there is the quite rich common Lumia 1320/1520 functionality (except Nokia Refocus ?for time being?) which is touted by Nokia in the following way:

      Continuing to redefine smartphone innovation, Nokia introduces its first ever large screen Lumia smartphones, the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320. With a six inch screen and the latest software advancements for Windows Phone, the Lu.mia 1320 and Lumia 1520 are perfectly suited for entertainment and productivity. A new third column of tiles on the home screen means people can see and do more on a larger screen. Bringing larger displays to the award-winning Lumia design, the new format is coupled with some of the most advanced camera innovations so people can capture and share the world around them. … With Microsoft Office built in, documents can be edited and shared easily for maximum productivity.
      It includes Nokia Music and HERE Maps for great music and location experiences, and welcomes both Nokia Camera and Nokia Storyteller apps, available in the Windows Phone Store. With the latest apps, the best from Nokia, and the best from Microsoft supported by LTE connections you can make the most out of the bright large screen on the Lumia 1320. Sit back and relax while you play the latest Xbox games, read web content, or watch movies on the six inch screen. A wealth of content can be stored using the free 7GB of SkyDrive storage or with the addition of a micro SD card adding up to 64GB more space.
      HERE experiences get an update too! Now with LiveSight in HERE Drive and HERE Drive+ you can easily locate your parked car, while in HERE Transit it will be easier to find nearby transit stations. … The third-party apps line-up for Lumia is significantly boosted with the arrival of … the Instagram photo editing and sharing network, Papyrus and InNote, which both offer handwritten note-taking solutions, and the Vine short-form video service from Twitter – available soon!
      imageFrom: Papyrus – Use your finger or a stylus to take notes on your Lumia. The vector graphics engine keeps your notes beautiful at any zoom level.
      Windows Phone Store is stocked with a full range of certified applications and games, with hundreds more titles added every day. Starting today, Windows Phone owners can download a number of new applications including: CamScanner, Goal Live Scores, InNote, phriz.be, Rail Rush, SophieLensHD and an updated TuneIn Radio application with radio stations live on the Start screen.
      Over the coming weeks, Windows Phone owners can experience many more new applications including: ESPN F1, EA SPORTS(TM) FIFA 14, Instagram, My Talking Tom, Papyrus, Temple Run 2, Vine, Vyclone Pro and Xbox Video among others**.
      The screen real estate afforded by the larger full HD display screens on the Nokia Lumia 1520 (6″) … has already inspired developers to create unique experiences for consumers. … Flipboard, a personal magazine, allows people to read and collect all the news they care about, curating their favorite stories into their own magazines. With Live Tiles … people can digest news faster and easier than ever before. Flipboard will be available … for Lumia smartphones in the coming months.
      During Nokia World 2013, Flipboard CTO Eric Feng gave us a rundown of some of the new features that are coming to the Windows version of the popular social-networking and magazine app.
      More information:
      – Replay Nokia World Abu Dhabi – (the 2nd embedded webcast:) Breakout Sessions [Nokia Conversations, Oct 22, 2013]
      Eric Feng (CTO, Flipboard): [42:15] Quick overview of Flipboard:
      — World’s first personal personal magazine (curated, personalized and displayed)
      — ~8000 content partnerships (The New York Times, BBC, AlJazeera, ESPN etc.)
      — Partnering with world’s 14 leading social networks
      — A community of a couple of million users who are curating magazines every day
      — About 4 million magazines curated already on every single day
      — ~100 million items can be consumed on Flipboard every single day
      — presented in a beautiful magazine layout
      image
      — ~90 million people and growing
      — ~200 countries worldwide
      image
      [47:10]
      –       Flipboard’s Mike McCue | Disrupt NYC 2013 [TechCrunch YouTube channel, April 29, 2019]
      Flipboard is a digital social magazine that aggregates web links from your social circle, i.e. Twitter and Facebook, and displays the content in magazine form on an iPad. Here, watch Co-Founder and CEO Mike McCue onstage at Disrupt NY 2013 talk about Flipboard.
      –       Flipboard and Pandora, gamechangers in mobile [This Week In Startups YouTube channel, Oct 15, 2013]
      Flipboard was one of the first iPad apps that made clear exactly how powerful the experience could be. Blending the best of RSS content with beautiful print-style layout, the app has only gotten better. Now Flipboard’s 85m users can create their own magazines tailored to specific interests. When cofounder and CEO Mike McCue sat down with Jason at LAUNCH Mobile, they dug into how the app has become publisher and platform, changing how we think about and interact with content. Then, a conversation with Tom Conrad, longtime CTO of Pandora. The publicly-traded company has long held sway in the mobile space, transforming how we think about radio by identifying exactly what makes a genre or mood, through its music genome project. Then, putting that tailored-just-for-you radio station into the pockets of its 175m users. Don’t miss these great conversations that point to the future of media in the mobile space.
      Today, let’s take a look at our homegrown apps right from the Nokia app factory.
      Nokia Camera App demo on Lumia 1520. Nokia Camera is available now to download for all Nokia Lumia PureView smartphones, and coming to the rest of the WP8 Lumia range along with the Lumia Black update early next year. Nokia Camera also has raw file support (DNG format) on Nokia Lumia 1520, and this will be coming to the Lumia 1020 when the Lumia Black update rolls out.
      Nokia Camera
      Two glorious apps combined into one. Nokia Pro Camera and Nokia Smart Camera have been merged to simplify your photo-taking experience, and ensure you get the perfect shot every time.
      The Nokia Camera integrates easy automatic mode, but you can also take control of your camera and become a pro by manually altering focus settings, shutter speed, and ISO as well as using Smart Burst, Remove Moving Objects or create an Action Shot features.
      Nokia has a new Refocus app which put Lytro cameras to shame, allowing users to focus on any element of the picture after the fact
      Nokia Refocus
      Rather than worry about getting the focus perfect first time, Nokia Refocus takes a photo and lets you choose the focus point after you’ve taken the shot.
      [AS AN ALTERNATIVE—to the above one—PRESENTATION] Nokia Refocus lets you readjust the focus after taking the photos. It will be available ON THE LUMIA 1520 AND ALL OTHER PUREVIEW LUMIA DEVICES in mid-november.
      This means you can create different expressions of a single photo, changing the same scene in a number of ways by refocusing on the area you want to highlight most. You can also choose to make everything in focus, or magically add colour pop to the focused area for more impact.
      [You can experience the effect of Nokia Refocus on an image captured with Nokia Refocus placed at http://refocus.nokia.com/]
      Nokia Storyteller
      One of the (many) announcements from Nokia World 2013 in Abu Dhabi is Nokia’s new Storyteller app, coming first with the Lumia 1520. We go hands on for a video tour of the new app.
      A single app that combines your photographs and videos with HERE location information to create a picture journey. When you take a photo or record a video, you can see precisely where it was taken on a familiar HERE map.
      See clusters of photos scattered across the globe and zoom in to an exact location. Plus, zoom out of any photo within the gallery to see where it was shot. You will also notice that your photos truly come live, the videos are played in-line, the action shots are beautifully animated, and the refocus effect is subtly played back to give the immersive feeling when browsing between the images.
      Nokia Beamer wins our award for the zaniest thing we’ve seen at Nokia World. The app allows you to share your display, live, to another Windows Phone (or really any device). Just watch the video and expect the app in the coming weeks.
      Nokia Beamer
      Nokia Beamer is the ideal way to share what’s on your Lumia display to any internet-enabled screen.
      PowerPoint presentations, photos, videos, absolutely anything that you see on your Lumia can be shared, remotely, to anywhere in the world.
      It’s like magic, there’s no hassle with connections, and it just works. You beam the screen to a nearby HTML enabled screen, or SMS it to a friend on the other side of the globe. You can even tweet it and let your followers see your screen in real time!

      It is quite remarkable that how much the “building on the affordability of the Lumia 520” claim (quoted in the beginning) is true for Lumia 1320. When comparing the two in devspecs (functionality comparison I will omit here) there are quite significant improvements (over Lumia 520) on one hand, such as:
      – 720 x 1280 pixels, 6 inches
      – Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3
      – ClearBlack, IPS LCD
      – High brightness mode
      – Lumia Color Profile
      – LTE with upto 100 Mbps uplink / 50 Mbps downlink speeds
      – 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor
      – 1 GB RAM, possibility to have 64 GB Micro SD cards
      – HERE Maps and HERE Drive
      – Magnetometer sensor (compass)
      – Auto and Manual Exposure, Face recognition, LED Flash and Video Light for the main camera
      – Full HD (1920 x 1080) video recording resolution
      – Video call, Video sharing and Video stabilizaion
      – Secondary camera
      – Dolby headphone
      – Bluetooth 4.0
      – Maximum standby time: 28 day
      – Maximum talk time (2G): 25 h
      – Maximum talk time (3G): 21 h
      – Maximum music playback time: 98 h
      – Maximum video playback time: 9 h
      – Maximum Wi-Fi browsing time: 11.5 h

      On the other hand—however—the list price of the Lumia 1320 is just $339 vs. the initial list price of the Lumia 520 around $200 when it was released to the market by end March this year. Considering that since then the street price of Lumia 520 went down to as low as $125 (corresponding to Rs.7,714 in India) we may expect that in half year after its Q1 2014 planned release (i.e. in Q3 2014) the street price of Lumia 1320 could become as low as $212 too (iff the sales go as well as for Lumia 520).

      In that case the higher by $410 price of Lumia 1520 ($749) will be even less lucrative for an average phablet buyer as it is now (IMHO already not lucrative at all). Look at the list functionality copied here from Lumia 1320 and 1520 spec data, and you will easily understand that (functionality denoted in bold is for Lumia 1520 only):

      Software and applications
      Productivity features

      • Personal information management features: Calculator, Clock, Calendar, Phonebook, Alarm clock, Reminders, To-do list, Social networks in Phonebook, OneNote, Wallet, Family Room, Kid’s Corner
      • Business apps: Adobe acrobat reader free download, Lync (Corporate IM) free download, SkyDrive storage for documents and notes, Company Hub for enterprise applications, Office apps: Excel, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote
      • Document formats supported: Excel, PDF, Word, OneNote, Powerpoint
      • Sync type: Exchange ActiveSync, Windows companion app, 1320: Mac companion app, Nokia Photo Transfer for Mac
      • Sync content: Calendar, Video, Pictures, Music, Contacts

      Other Applications

      • Game features: DirectX 11, Touch UI, XBox-Live Hub

      Software platform & User Interface

      • SW Platform: Windows Phone
      • Software release: Windows Phone 8 with Lumia Black

      Communications
      Email and Messaging5

      • Email clients: Yahoo! Mail, Outlook Mobile, Gmail, Office 365, Nokia Mail, Windows Live / Hotmail / Outlook.com, MS Exchange Active Sync
      • Email protocols: SMTP, IMAP4, POP3
      • Email features: Viewing and editing of email attachments, Always up to date, Multiple simultaneous email accounts, Text-to-speech message reader, Email attachments, Conversational view on email, Linking multiple inboxes to one, Inbox filtering, HTML viewer
      • Supported instant messaging services: Google Talk, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, WhatsApp, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype IM, Facebook
      • Messaging features: Integrated text messaging and chat, Instant messaging, Concatenated SMS for long messages, Multiple SMS deletion, List of recently used numbers, Audio messaging, Text-to-speech message reader, Text messaging, Number screening for messaging, Unified MMS/SMS editor, Automatic resizing of images for MMS, Distribution lists for messaging, Multimedia messaging, Conversational chat style SMS, Unified inbox for SMS and MMS

      Call management

      • Call management features: Voice commands, Call waiting, Voice mail, Integrated hands-free speakers, Call forwarding, Call logs: dialled, received and missed, Call history, Voice dial, Conference call, Skype voice call
      • Video call features: Skype video call
      • Supported amount of phonebooks: One integrated phonebook
      • Supports amount of contacts: Unlimited
      • Ringtones: Downloadable ringtones, MP3 ringtones
      • Noise cancellation: Yes –> Multimicrophone uplink noise cancellation
      • Speech codecs: AMR-WB, GSM FR, AMR-NB, GSM HR, EFR, GSM EFR

      Device security
      Security

      • Enterprise security features: Remote security policy enforcement
      • General Security features: Remote device locking via Internet, Secure NFC, Track and Protect via internet, Firmware update, Remote wipe of user data via Internet, Device lock, Device passcode, PIN code, Firmware and OS integrity check, Secure device start-up, Online back-up and restore, Application sandboxing and integrity check
      • Advance security features: Lost device tracking, Browser integrated anti-phishing
      • Data encryption: User data encryption for device

      Sharing and Internet
      Browsing and Internet

      • Internet browser capabilities: Internet Explorer 10
      • Social apps: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, LINE, WeChat
      • Photo sharing: Share over Bluetooth, Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Send as email attachment, SkyDrive, Nokia Beamer
      • Video sharing: YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Video sharing to social network and internet, Facebook, SkyDrive, Joyn video call sharing
      • Location sharing: WP location sharing, Foursquare
      • Wi-Fi hotspot: Up to 8 Wi-Fi-enabled devices
      • Nokia Beamer: Nokia Beamer lets you share your screen with family, colleagues and friends by simply pointing your Nokia Lumia at any screen displaying the web address http://beam.nokia.com. Or share your live Lumia screen by sending a link by email, sms or social networks.

      Navigation
      GPS and navigation6

      • Location and navigation apps: HERE Maps, HERE Drive –> HERE Drive+
      • Navigation features: (Pin places to Start screen, Reveal the surrounding places, Reviews, info and photos for places, Routing options, Save favourite destinations, Call, share and get directions to places,) –> Public transportation routing guidance, Free maps, (Live traffic information,) Automatic day/night view switching, (Venue maps – shopping and transport centers,) Offline maps, (Online and offline favourites), Speed limit warnings, LiveSight, Download the latest maps with Wi-Fi, Free turn-by-turn walk navigation, (Save and sync favs with HERE.com,) Free global voice guided turn-by-turn drive navigation
      • Location technologies: Magnetometer, A-GPS, Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GLONASS

      Location and navigation apps

      • HERE Maps: Discover the best places in any neighbourhood with HERE Maps. New LiveSight technology reveals interesting places in your display. Explore malls, stations and more with venue maps. Access your favourite places on any HERE app and on here.com.
      • HERE Drive –> HERE Drive+: Navigate safely with (free regional voice-guided directions) –> global free turn-by-turn navigation and true offline support. (HERE Drive) –> HERE Drive+ features audible speed limit warnings, dedicated dashboard and commute assistance. Save and access favourite places on any HERE app and on here.com.
      • HERE Transit: Get around by bus, train and subway all in one easy-to-use app. Compare route options, arrival and departure times and walking distances in over 700 cities and 50 countries. Over-the-air updates ensure you always have the latest routes and schedules.

      Photography
      Photography apps

      • Nokia Camera7: Nokia Camera brings together the features from Nokia Pro Cam and Nokia Smart Cam modes into one application. It gives you the whole exclusive Nokia camera experience with fast access to editing and sharing.
      • Creative Studio: Get more out of your pictures with this quick and easy photo editor. Creative Studio’s editing tools let you quickly adjust color balance, remove red eye and apply filters. Then, share your pictures directly on Facebook and Twitter.
      • Cinemagraph: A magical blend of photo and movie-like animation, creating pictures that seem almost alive. Helpful on-screen assistance lets you select the animated area of your picture and easily create and edit a cinemagraph. You can share your cinemagraph with friends via social media, email and messaging.
      • Panorama: Get the bigger picture with Nokia’s easy-to-use Panorama app. Simply take your pictures and the app automatically stitches them into a picture-perfect view. Once you’re done, share your panorama directly to Twitter and Facebook.
      • Nokia Storyteller: Nokia Storyteller organizes your photos into stories on an interactive HERE map by time and place. Cinemagraphs and smart photos play automatically. See points of interest around the photos taken and pull up contact info, call or email directly from Storyteller, enabling you to authentically re-experience your entire journey when the time comes.

      Image capturing

      • Capture modes: Video, Still
      • Scene modes: Automatic, Sports, Night
      • White balance modes: Cloudy, Incandescent, Fluorescent, Daylight, Automatic
      • Light sensitivity: Automatic, ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 1600, ISO 3200, ISO 4000
      • Photos viewed by: Camera Roll, Month, Timeline, Photo editor, Favorites, Album, Photos from social networks, Nokia Storyteller

      Music and Audio
      Music apps

      • Nokia Music: Unlimited streaming of music for free with Nokia Music. Discover great new music wherever you go. Create your own artist inspired mix or enjoy the mixes from our music experts and celebrity friends. You can listen to your favourite mixes offline and discover live music around you with Nokia Music Gig Finder.

      Accessibility
      Accessibility features

      • Hearing: Vibrating alerts, TTY support, Video call, BT neckloop compatible
      • Vision: Screen reader compatible, Voice recognition, Vibrating alerts, Zoom, Voice commands, Font magnification, High contrast mode, Customizable home screen
      • Physical skills: Speakerphone, Voice recognition, Voice commands, Customizable home screen

      6Downloading of maps over-the-air may involve transferring large amounts of data. Your service provider may charge for the data transmission. The availability of products, services and features may vary by region. Please check with your local Nokia dealer for further details and availability of language options. These specifications are subject to change without notice.

      7Nokia Camera comes as an update to Nokia Pro Camera. Available now from Store.

      Dell’s all Intel tablets and laptops targeting the evolving mobile workforce even with their most consumer specific Android tablets

      October 3, 2013 8:09 am / Leave a comment

      Dell is 100% committed to Intel (“for speed, responsiveness, and battery efficiency”) from now on which was, nevertheless, not discovered by the media. Otherwise the essence was well expressed by these Oct 2, 2013 media reports (being similar to others):

      Read also: 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 14-26, 2013]

      Conspicuously missing from Dell’s lineup is any trace of Windows RT, the stripped-down version of Windows designed for ARM processors. Dell was the last remaining Windows RT supporter outside of Microsoft, at least until the company discontinued its XPS 10 last month. When we asked Dell’s director of tablets, Bill Gorden, he said the company’s still considering its options. “We’re very happy with the direction of Windows 8.1, and we have multiple screen sizes and capabilities there,” he said. “We’re not sure what our plans are for Windows RT at the moment.”

      However, Gorden suggests that we should take the Venue launch as a sign that Dell isn’t planning to abandon the consumer market after it goes private. “I think the introduction of all these devices is really a signal of how important end-user computing is to Dell,” he toldThe Verge. “I think you’re going to start seeing Dell start being prominent in the consumer space.”

      What was announced (according to Dell’s press release, available here at the very end):

      The Dell Venue 7, Venue 8, Venue 8 Pro, and new XPS 15 will be available from October 18 on www.dell.com in the United States and select countries around the world. The Venue 11 Pro, XPS 11 and the updated XPS 13 with touch will be available in November. Starting prices are as follows:

      • Venue 7 [Android]: $149.99
      • Venue 8 [Android]: $179.99
      • Venue 8 Pro: $299.99
      • Venue 11 Pro: $499.99
      • New XPS 15: $1,499.99
      • XPS 11: $999.99
      • New XPS 13: $999.99

      …

      All Dell Venue tablets are based on Intel processing power for speed, responsiveness, and battery efficiency. The Dell Venue 7 and Dell Venue 8 [Android tablets] feature Intel Atom Z2760 (“Clover Trail”) processors, while the Dell Venue 8 Pro and Dell Venue 11 Pro [Windows 8.1 tablets] feature the new Intel Atom quad-core processors, code named “Bay Trail.” The Venue 11 Pro offers up to 4th Generation Intel Core [”Haswell”] i3 and i5 processor options and Intel vPro for manageability.

      Dell messages:

      From the press release:

      • New Dell Venue tablets offer the ability to connect, share, and access content with ease
      • XPS 11 is the world’s thinnest, lightest and most compact 2-in-1 in the world with the world’s first Quad HD display on an 11.6-inch 2-in-1
      • XPS 15 powerhouse laptop offers the world’s first 15.6-inch Quad HD+ display for jaw-dropping visuals and the ultimate experience

      …

      Dell Venue tablets are designed to give people on-the-go a wide-selection of sizes and options to meet their varying needs. From 8 and 11-inch Windows-based tablets complete with keyboard and stylus options, to the 7 and 8-inch Android tablets, Dell has created a dedicated brand of tablets to meet the needs of customers who are the epitome of the evolving workforce.

      For New Dell Venue 7 and 8 Tablets [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      Stay connected with Venue 7 and 8 tablets featuring fast Intel processors and easy to use Android OS.

      For New Dell Venue 8 Pro Tablet [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      Connect to what you need easily, quickly and securely with the Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet [powered by Intel quad-core processor].

      For New Dell Venue 11 Pro Tablet [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      http://www.dell.com/tablets
      The no compromise tablet for those that expect more and do more [featuring Intel Core processors].

      For Enabling the mobile workforce with Dell [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      Learn more about the evolving mobile workforce, bring your own device (BYOD) trends and the opportunity they present you as a Dell partner.

      For Dell Venue 11 Pro Tablet for Work and Home [DellVlog YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      See how the Venue 11 Pro goes from your home life to work life, with no compromises.

      Only here, and only inside there is a Microsoft related message (while Intel is everywhere here and especially in the above videos):

        • Stay connected with the Intel Core based Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet.
        • Keep in touch with loved ones across the globe.
        • Portability and performance in one device.
        • Chair projects with the stunning Full HD wide angle screen.
        • Run Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Office powered by Intel processors.
        • Interact like never before with near-field communication.
        • Present new ideas with Miracast technology.
        • Designed for on the go or on the couch.
        • Do more with the do it all Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet.

      While at least one media source, CNET was much more Microsoft/Windows focussed:

      The Dell Venue 8 Pro delivers full Windows 8.1 in a $299 package [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      http://cnet.co/19ZguLY
      Dell’s Venue 8 Pro is a full Windows 8.1 tablet with an 8-inch screen.

      The Dell Venue 7 and 8 mark Dell’s return to Android tablets [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      http://cnet.co/1bw0Mdk
      Dell finally moves beyond the Streak with two new Android tablets.

      Get accessorized with the Dell Venue 11 Pro [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      http://cnet.co/173mhOm
      The 11-inch Venue 11 Pro from Dell features a removable battery and plenty of accessory options.

      The Dell XPS 11 and 12 feature unique hybrid designs [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      http://cnet.co/1fJpImK
      Both the Dell XPS 11 and 12 are take traditional hybrid design and throws it on its ear.

      The Dell XPS 13 and 15 feature high-end specs and thin designs [CNETTV YouTube channel, Oct 2, 2013]

      http://cnet.co/1brtC1U
      Dell goes ultra high-end with its XPS 13 and 15 laptops.

      Press release from the company:

      Dell Introduces New Line of Tablets and Updated XPS Laptops: Create, Share and Access Content from Virtually Anywhere [Oct 2, 2013]

      • New Dell Venue tablets offer the ability to connect, share, and access content with ease
      • XPS 11 is the world’s thinnest, lightest and most compact 2-in-1 in the world with the world’s first Quad HD display on an 11.6-inch 2-in-1
      • XPS 15 powerhouse laptop offers the world’s first 15.6-inch Quad HD+ display for jaw-dropping visuals and the ultimate experience

      Dell today took a bold step in unveiling a new family of tablets and new laptops, including a 2-in-1 Ultrabook. The Dell Venue line of tablets is comprised of four new ultrathin models designed to address the changing way people live and work today. Dell’s “damned sexy” tablets, as described by leading Enderle Group analyst, Rob Enderle, deliver leading performance and quality, backed by Intel processing technology. With compact designs that make it easy to stay connected on the go, the Dell Venue tablets have an exquisite fit and finish.

      In addition to the versatile new Dell Venue tablets, Dell is introducing new XPS laptops, each with breakthrough displays for a phenomenal viewing experience with vibrant, crisp images in any available screen size. The new XPS 11, the thinnest, most compact 2-in-1 in the world, also features the first Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display on an 11.6-inch 2-in-1. The XPS 15 multimedia powerhouse boasts a stunningly thin design, and offers as an option the first 15.6-inch Quad HD+ (3200 x 1800) display in the world, which is the highest resolution available on a laptop of that size. Dell is also refreshing its award-winning XPS 13 Ultrabook with faster processors, touch Full HD (1920 x 1080) display and improved battery life. With these three laptops, Dell is leading the industry with the highest resolution displays possible.

      “People today expect the best experience possible from their technology – they are counting on it to keep them connected and move with them, wherever they are,” said Sam Burd, vice president Dell Personal Computing Group. “The new Dell Venue tablets and XPS laptops give customers the stellar experience they expect from us, with performance that allows them to work how they want, when they want, in a design they’ll be proud to show off and own.”

      Dell Venue Tablets: Connect, Share and Access Content with Ease
      Dell Venue tablets are designed to give people on-the-go a wide-selection of sizes and options to meet their varying needs. From 8 and 11-inch Windows-based tablets complete with keyboard and stylus options, to the 7 and 8-inch Android tablets, Dell has created a dedicated brand of tablets to meet the needs of customers who are the epitome of the evolving workforce.

      • The Dell Venue 8 Pro and Dell Venue 11 Pro Windows 8.1-based tablets combine the level of performance, design and responsiveness end-users love while giving IT departments what they need – the ability to integrate into an existing corporate environment with full compatibility with current Windows applications and Microsoft Office integration. Both tablets feature optional advanced security features and services such as TPM and Dell Enterprise Services.
      • The lightweight Dell Venue 8 Pro runs Windows 8.1, has a bright HD IPS display, advanced connectivity options and provides long battery life so range anxiety is no longer an issue. People can also stay productive with Office 2013 Home & Student, included with the device, and the optional Dell Active Stylus.
      • The Dell Venue 11 Pro, also based on Windows 8.1, provides ultimate 2-in-1 flexibility with the power of an Ultrabook, convenience of a detachable keyboard and experience of a desktop. Unlike competitive tablets, it has a user removable/replaceable battery, and its large, Full HD display with wide viewing angles makes it easy to read and create content while staying mobile. It is also available with a variety of keyboard and stylus options:
        • Dell Active Stylus makes it easy to annotate, draw or take notes.
        • Dell Slim Keyboard, designed for travel, also serves as a cover for the screen when folded up.
        • Dell Mobile Keyboard with integrated battery provides all day productivity with a full-sized keyboard while extending the battery life.
        • Dell Tablet Desktop Dock delivers full productivity on a desk with USB 3.0 ports, and dual display out ports for display extension.
      • The Dell Venue 7 and Dell Venue 8 Android-based tablets are affordable, feature-rich tablets for people who want to be constantly connected wherever they are. Both tablets have an upscale fit and finish, and are designed with longevity in mind with the right components so that customers will be just as delighted with their tablet one year from now, as they are on the day they take it out of the box.

      All Dell Venue tablets are based on Intel processing power for speed, responsiveness, and battery efficiency. The Dell Venue 7 and Dell Venue 8 feature Intel Atom Z2760 (“Clover Trail”) processors, while the Dell Venue 8 Pro and Dell Venue 11 Pro feature the new Intel Atom quad-core processors, code named “Bay Trail.” The Venue 11 Pro offers up to 4th Generation Intel Core i3 and i5 processor options and Intel vPro for manageability.

      Dell XPS Laptops and 2-in-1: The Ultimate Experience with Gorgeous Displays
      Dell’s award-winning XPS laptop line just got even better with the new XPS 15 powerhouse laptop, the introduction of the XPS 11 2-in-1, and an update to the flagship XPS 13 Ultrabook. In keeping with the XPS tradition of offering the best computing experience in any product category, the XPS laptops and 2-in-1 feature machined aluminum, carbon fiber, vibrant displays, and Corning Gorilla Glass NBT for performance, durability and the ultimate experience.

      • Starting at 2.5lbs[i] and just 11-15mm thin, the XPS 11 is the world’s thinnest, lightest and most compact 2-in-1 Ultrabook available today, offering a tablet-first design with laptop functionality. It easily transitions from tablet to laptop with a 360 degree rotating hinge design, and an innovative solid surface backlit touch keyboard that provides a superb experience from lap to bag. With a Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display, the highest resolution display in an 11.6-inch 2-in-1 today, the XPS 11 has a bright, crisp viewing experience. The display also features True Color viewing powered by eeColor, which enables customers to enjoy true, rich consistent color in nearly any lighting environment.
      • The XPS 15 continues to be a multimedia powerhouse delivering the highest resolution in its class, and incredible power in an ultra-thin, light wedge design, starting at 4.44lbsi. The XPS 15 is the first 15.6-inch laptop in the world to feature a Quad HD+ display, and also available with a touch option, boasts over 5.7 million pixels – five times the amount of standard HD – for jaw-dropping resolution. Designed for creative enthusiasts, the XPS 15 packs 4th Generation Intel Core i5 and i7 quad core processor options and NVIDIA discrete graphics options. Every XPS 15 boots and resumes within seconds with hard drive configuration options from 500GB to 1TB[ii], both with a 32GB mSATA SSD, to a 512GB solid state drive, all including Intel Rapid Start Technology[iii].
      • The award-winning XPS 13, with its 13.3-inch, edge-to-edge display that innovatively fits into a footprint similar to an 11-inch laptop, is razor thin and light, starting at under 3lbsi. It is now even faster with 4thgeneration Intel Core processors, Intel HD 4400 graphics, and has longer battery life for the mobile professional who values a sleek design, responsiveness and ultimate mobility. Its Full HD display provides a brilliant viewing experience and is now even more versatile with a touch option.

      “Dell appears to have its innovative mojo back,” said Tim Bajarin, President of Creative Strategies. “These new products clearly emphasize Dell’s commitment to create innovative mobile solutions for businesses and consumers and I believe represent some of the best products they have made in many years.”

      Personal and Professional Content Anytime, Anywhere
      The Dell PocketCloud application is pre-installed on all XPS and Venue products, helping users build their own “personal cloud” and remotely manage personal and professional content. By combining PocketCloud with the portability of the new Venue tablets and XPS laptops, mobile workers will be able to enjoy an easy and connected experience with access to all of their apps and content from virtually anywhere.

      Get the Most Out of Your Technology with Dell Services
      Dell customers can get the most out of their technology with Dell Services, dedicated to keeping them connected and productive, whether they’re using their Dell Venue tablet or XPS purchase for work or home. In addition to the Dell Limited Hardware Warranty, consumers can elect to include additional protection such as Accidental Damage Service[iv], Premium Phone Support and Rapid Return for Repair after Remote Diagnosis[v], which means that their system will be repaired and returned to them within 3-5 business days after remote diagnosis. Likewise, business customers can be rest assured that their devices will fit seamlessly and securely into their corporate IT environment with Dell Enterprise Services like ProSupport[vi] on the Dell Venue 8 Pro and Venue 11 Pro tablets.

      Availability and Pricing
      The Dell Venue 7, Venue 8, Venue 8 Pro, and new XPS 15 will be available from October 18 on www.dell.com in the United States and select countries around the world. The Venue 11 Pro, XPS 11 and the updated XPS 13 with touch will be available in November. Starting prices are as follows:

      • Venue 7: $149.99
      • Venue 8: $179.99
      • Venue 8 Pro: $299.99
      • Venue 11 Pro: $499.99
      • New XPS 15: $1,499.99
      • XPS 11: $999.99
      • New XPS 13: $999.99

      About Dell
      Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.dell.com.

      Dell World
      Join us at Dell World 2013, Dell’s premier customer event exploring how technology solutions and services are driving business innovation. Learn more at www.dellworld.com and follow #DellWorldon Twitter.

      Dell, Dell Venue and XPS are trademarks of Dell Inc. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.

      [i] Weights vary depending on configuration and manufacturing variability.
      [ii] Hard drives: GB means 1 billion bytes and TB equals 1 trillion bytes; actual capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment and will be less.
      [iii] Intel Rapid Start Technology: Requires a Solid-State Drive (SSD) or properly configured HDD + SSD.
      For copy of Limited Hardware Warranty, write Dell USA LP, Attn: Warranties, One Dell Way, Round Rock, TX 78682 or see http://www.dell.com/warranty
      [iv] Accidental Damage Service excludes theft, loss and damage due to fire, flood or other acts of nature, or intentional damage. Customer may be required to return unit to Dell. For complete details, visitwww.dell.com/servicecontracts
      [v] Remote Diagnosis is determination by online/phone technician of cause of issue, which may take multiple extended sessions. If issue is covered by Limited Hardware Warranty and not resolved remotely, shipping instructions will be provided. Next Business Day shipping not available in all areas, which may delay repair and return times. Other conditions apply. For complete details about Rapid Return for Repair after Remote Diagnosis Service, visit Dell.com/servicecontracts.
      [vi] Availability and terms of Dell Services vary by region. For more information, visitwww.dell.com/servicedescriptions.

      Multi-tasking and multi-window view used together for high performance productivity scenarios in the state-of-the-art UX environment of Microsoft Windows 8.1 – the ultimate solution not available with Apple and Android devices

      September 26, 2013 4:43 pm / Leave a comment

      The versions of multi-tasking and multi-window view in Windows 8.1 are already the second generations of the concept which first appeared during the preview of Windows 8 in September, 2011. Properly designed applications relying on them can not only be run simultaneously but also can manifest themselves at the same time on up to 4 independent parts of a single screen, as well as extended by using any number screens where there are additional monitors connected to the system. That capability not only enables much higher performance productivity scenarios than before with the first version (i.e. in Windows 8), but the number of possible scenarios can be significantly higher and more complex.

      This is especially important as – unlike the current iPad and Android system – application developers could plan their individual apps as part of a growing society of apps (delivered usually by 3d parties) which can be used together with some companion apps simultaneously, constituting together a given scenario actually created by the user himself or herself. This is very much a workstation like environment already found in classic GUI based workstations, but now inside such a state-of-the-art UX environment as that of Microsoft Windows 8.1.

      Acknowledgement: I should thank Zsolt Bátorfi from the DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) unit of Microsoft Hungary for his invaluable input to this post.  

      The quite simplistic iPad and Android environments are mainly satisfying the entertainment scenarios only. So the 2nd generation Microsoft Surface family of productivity tablets priced upto $2420 (when for an All-in-One configuration) [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 24, 2013] was rightfully positioned against them as there is a growing demand on the market which is not served by any other platform. The same applies to the upcoming Windows 8.1 devices from the 3d party vendors.

      There will be entry level products like the $349 ASUS Transformer Book T100 which was already shown as part of 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] delivered by Intel. With that the growing but still unsatisfied demands could be fulfilled by starting at sufficiently competitive levels in terms of Android entertainments devices from major global vendors, even more so in terms of Samsung devices.

      I put together this post in order to understand this additional (to Intel Bay Trail and Haswell SoCs) breakthrough opportunity as clearly as only possible.

      Details

      Windows From Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1 [by Antoine Leblond on Blogging Windows, May 30, 2013]

      image

      We’re also making improvements for using multiple apps at once in Windows 8.1.

      Windows 8.1 brings variable, continuous size of snap views. You will have more ways to see multiple apps on the screen at the same time. You can resize apps to any size you want, share the screen between two apps, or have up to four apps on screen. If you have multiple displays connected, you can have different Windows Store apps running on all the displays at the same time and the Start Screen can stay open on one monitor. This makes multi-tasking even easier. Also in Windows 8.1, you can have multiple windows of the same app snapped together – such as two Internet Explorer windows.

      Microsoft started to run this TV ad in May 2013 to communicate the concept of Windows 8: Multitasking [Windows YouTube channel, May 9, 2013] most widely

      International Social Video: Like playing Piano and Ping Pong, Windows 8 lets you work and play at the same time. See more athttp://windows.com

      And it was showcased last time with Windows 8.1 as Microsoft Surface 2 Halo Spartan Assault Gaming and Office Suite Multitasking Demo [HotHardware YouTube channel, Sept 25, 2013]

      At Microsoft’s recent Surface 2 event in New York, Corporate VP of MS Surface, Panos Panay, demonstrated their new NVIDIA Tegra 4-powered Surface 2 tablet playing Halo Spartan Assault with running several Office applications like One Note, Word, Email and Excel all in the background or side by side at the same time.

      At the same time people are even discovering undocumented (so far) capabilities like in this Modern App Multitasking in Windows 8.1 RTM [WindowsObserver YouTube channel, Sept 11, 2013]

      This video highlights what I initially thought was a bug in Windows 8.1 Preview and now believe is an undocumented UI feature when you are working with more than one Modern App on your devices screen. Update: Thanks to a Twitter follower (@awktane) for this tip which I missed. When you select that third Modern App click and hold your mouse button in the middle of the floating app. After a few seconds an opening will appear to add that app as a third snapped app on the screen. Of course this depends on your screen resolution being large enough to support 3 snapped apps. Another Twitter follower @DatabaseJase shared with me that you can drag the floating app to the top of the screen to open it in full

      Compare this to the previous generation hardware and software Microsoft Surface RT – True Multitasking Demo [MyWorldOfIT YouTube channel, Nov 2, 2012] with Windows 8.0 which a common Android tablet or iPad still cannot do (except some Samsung GALAXY devices still in a limited split screen fashion, as noted a little later)

      which was described in Design case study: iPad to Windows Store app [MSDN, March 21, 2012] as

      Use snap view to engage your users
      Windows 8 lets users multitask by “snapping” an app next to another app. The snapped view is a great way to increase the app’s time on screen and engage users for longer periods. It’s easy for a user to change the main app and the snapped app by manipulating the splitter between the two, so it is important to maintain context across resizes. We don’t want users to lose app state as a result of resizing their app.
      Example: home screen snap view image
      Windows Store app
        • The snap view of the home screen is just a different view of the home page where a user can still access the same content.
        • In snap view, a user pans vertically to get to more content because it is more comfortable to pan along the long edge. This is different than the horizontal panning in full view, which is also optimized to pan along the long edge.

        Or in a somewhat different early presentation of Windows 8 Multitasking Experience [Vectorform YouTube channel, Sept 27, 2011]

        A quick look at the multitasking experience in Windows 8’s Metro UI running on a tablet.
        Note that Samsung was quick to employ this single concept in its forked Android solution, first in Multiscreen – GALAXY Note 10.1 – Samsung [SAMSUNGMOBILEUK YouTube channel, Oct 12, 2012]  and  then later in GALAXY Note II and Note 3 phablets, and in the Note 8.0 tablet and GALAXY S4 smartphone, where it was called Multi Window (also for Note 10.1), but just for two applications at the same time for which the device screen is split into two parts. See also Samsung GALAXY Note 10.1 Has Arrived Game-Changing Device Hits U.S. Store Shelves Tomorrow [Samsung Mobile Press, Aug 15, 2012]. Not for all GALAXY devices!
        Multiscreen on the Galaxy Note 10.1 makes multitasking easy – see here how cutting and pasting an image is as simple as it possibly could be. Find out more here: http://spr.ly/GN101Ytd

        And here is a rare recognition of the fact that Yes, the Microsoft Surface RT tablet is much better than Android or iPad Tablets [GodGunsGutsGlory4KJV YouTube channel, Aug 21, 2013]

        I held off from buying a Microsoft Tablet and bought an Android Tablet after listening to some flawed and rather biased reviews a while back. But after being frustrated once again that Android STILL CAN’T MULTITASK while playing videos I went and looked further into the Microsoft Surface RT and bought one. There are several popular youtube videos comparing the Surface RT to Androids and iPad tablets but evidently either those people don’t know how to run a REAL tablet or they are deliberately skewing the comparisons. Because face it, the Surface RT is much more capable than the Android. And the Surface Pro of course is a full powered laptop but with less battery life and cost a pretty penny/ So for what I want in a tablet I got a Surface RT and it is great! As I said, the most of the reviews that came up in search were flawed. I was watching this pathetic one and should have known better when I saw the username… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYbCfL… But check out the comments now. LOL! The comments were more helpful than the video. They talked about some honest review by some Lisa woman so I found this video and it was great… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIOG2V… So after that I bought one and the Surface RT did what I needed and then some. Like built in Remote Desktop that works just like it did on my Windows 7 laptop so I can log into my home pc while away. And while most reviews just showed the Surface running the active tiles home screen and launched apps from there they did not demonstrate the Desktop mode which operates it in the more native Windows screen that people are used to which is where you can open windows and navigate the machine or use full Internet Explorer 10. Anyway I am ranting again… and that’s what this video is. It is more of a RANT and a warning to others to be careful with the biased reviews. I give a two thumbs up to this tablet!
        I held off from buying a Microsoft Tablet and bought an Android Tablet after listening to some flawed and rather biased reviews a while back.
        But after being frustrated once again that Android STILL CAN’T MULTITASK while playing videos I went and looked further into the Microsoft Surface RT and bought one.
        There are several popular youtube videos comparing the Surface RT to Androids and iPad tablets but evidently either those people don’t know how to run a REAL tablet or they are deliberately skewing the comparisons. Because face it, the Surface RT is much more capable than the Android. And the Surface Pro of course is a full powered laptop but with less battery life and cost a pretty penny/ So for what I want in a tablet I got a Surface RT and it is great!
        As I said, the most of the reviews that came up in search were flawed.
        I was watching this pathetic one and should have known better when I saw the username… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYbCfL…
        But check out the comments now. LOL! The comments were more helpful than the video.
        They talked about some honest review by some Lisa woman so I found this video and it was great… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIOG2V…
        So after that I bought one and the Surface RT did what I needed and then some. Like built in Remote Desktop that works just like it did on my Windows 7 laptop so I can log into my home pc while away.
        And while most reviews just showed the Surface running the active tiles home screen and launched apps from there they did not demonstrate the Desktop mode which operates it in the more native Windows screen that people are used to which is where you can open windows and navigate the machine or use full Internet Explorer 10.
        Anyway I am ranting again… and that’s what this video is. It is more of a RANT and a warning to others to be careful with the biased reviews. I give a two thumbs up to this tablet!

        No wonder that Microsoft started to highlight the multitasking advantage in this recent video about Surface RT vs. iPad [Windows YouTube channel, Aug 7, 2013], see the part starting at [0:43] under the title “Multitask” and noting that:

        One app at a time [on iPad] vs. Do multiple things at once [on Surface RT]

        See how the Surface RT with Windows 8 matches up against the iPad. Check out more at http://windows.com/compare

        Design, technology and business background for the above differentiation

        Microsoft design principles (Windows) [MSDN, March 8, 2013]

        Here are five principles for building great Windows Store apps. Use these principles when you plan your app, and always ensure that your design and development choices live up to them.

      • Pride in craftsmanship
      • Be fast and fluid
      • Authentically digital
      • Do more with less
      • Win as one

              • Work with other apps, devices, and the system to complete scenarios for people. For example, let people get content from one app and share it with another. Take advantage of what people already know, like standard touch gestures and charms, to provide a sense of familiarity, control, and confidence.

              • Use the UI model.
              • Work with other apps to complete scenarios by participating in app contracts.
              • Use our tools and templates to promote consistency.

        Following these five Microsoft design principles will help you make the best choices when you design your app.

        See also: Modern Design at Microsoft [by Steve Clayton on Microsoft News Center, June 7, 2013] – Going beyond flat design

        A very important example of “Work with other apps to complete scenarios“ is the multitasking which became available in the first version of Windows 8, and had been significantly enhanced in the recent second version:

        Jensen Harris on productivity and multitasking from Tami Reller: Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 Keynote [transcript provided by Microsoft, July 8, 2013]

        The desktop in Windows is the single most powerful platform in the world. It is the only platform in which you can run Photoshop and Lightroom and AutoCAD and Visual Studio and Office all in one platform. And we really wanted to bring together the best of the modern UI and the best of the desktop UI and harmonize them in Windows 8.1.

        So the first thing that you’ll notice is that we’ve made it really easy to get to the Start screen in 8.1 with the addition of the Start button. (Laughter, applause.)
        So when I click this, this is not just your father’s Start button, this actually floats in the tiles on top of the desktop. So you get this beautiful look of your desktop. You don’t lose context of what you’re working on. It just comes in over top and then floats away.
        And you can see we’ve done a lot of work here to make your Start screen be ultra-efficient. We’ve got the small tiles, we’ve got the groups, we’ve got the large tiles that allow you to create, together with new enterprise custom ability and control that we’re giving over the Start screen in Windows 8.1 for you to create an awesome, enterprise consumer dashboard that has all the things that you love in one place.
        And of course, one other thing that you can do by default in Windows 8.1 is boot to the desktop if you want as well. And so the whole experience comes together where you have control over the PC.

        So we love the desktop and we have made it a lot better. But productivity isn’t just defined by the desktop. The desktop is one way of working. Productivity is defined by robust multitasking, flexibility, efficiency, and having all the apps that you need. And what we’ve done in 8.1 is taken productivity to the next level and brought what was great about the desktop and the things that you could do there and made it even better in the modern UI and optimized it for not just 8-inch tablets, but also large screens, desktops, powerful laptops.

        Let me show you some of what we’ve done. So one of the most important apps that exists is mail. This is the new version of the mail app that we have not yet made available publicly, but will be available with Windows 8.1 RTM.
        And I’m going to use my mouse here. The first thing you’re going to notice is this power pane here on the left that shows me my folders, it shows me people. I can flag mails very quickly just here in the view — boom, boom, boom, boom, boom — and they’ll show up here in my flag view.
        We have my favorite people, all of the mail here, and I also have them split out. Of course I control this. So if I want to put Panos in my list of favorite people, I can do that. If I want to take some people out, I can do that as well.
        We’ve also integrated some awesome features to help keep your mail under control. Of course something like drag and drop is really important, and we have all your folders here that you can just directly drag and drop into using your mouse or touch.
        We have brought together all of your social updates. So things from Foursquare and Facebook and LinkedIn, these sort of pseudo-spammy, but kind of interesting things and put them in one place so they’re out of your way without needing to set anything up.
        And then probably my favorite view here is the newsletter view. And these are also things that sometimes you want to see. Like I love that I have these Living Social deals, but I don’t need to get eight of them a day, I really only need to see the most recent one. And so we’ve integrated a feature called Sweep into the mail app. And what this allows me to do is I can delete all of my Living Social deals. But what’s even cooler is I can say, just delete all of them except for the latest ones. I’m going to hit Sweep, and it’s going to set this up on the server. You’re going to see all of the Living Social deals have disappeared except for the top ones, and it’s always going to make sure that I only have one of these in my inbox from now on. These are some of the ways in which mail makes you more efficient. (Applause.) Thank you.
        Another thing, though, that’s really important if you’re being efficient is the keyboard because I don’t know about you, but I do an awful lot with keyboard shortcuts just typing. And I showed you the new search feature, but I haven’t shown you how well it works with the keyboard and how it makes you more efficient.
        This new search feature is really the command line for Windows. So I’m just going to type a single — I type “Windows plus S” to bring up search. I’m going to type a single character, “K.” And in doing so, it has brought back apps like Kindle and In the Kitchen, it’s brought back Music, it’s brought back settings like keyboard settings, it’s brought back files, local and in the cloud, it’s brought back Web suggestions, it’s brought back people on my PC. And it’s very, very powerful.
        For instance, if I’m just here in mail and I just want to start playing a song, I can just type “K” it brings up the name of the song. I’m just going to hit enter, and it starts playing without even taking me out of the app. Just immediate music playback. So this is one of the examples of how the new Search box makes it possible to do things very, very fast. You will find that this becomes the stickiest feature in Windows 8.1, and you can’t imagine ever living without it.

        Another thing that defines productivity is multitasking. And one of the things that I think is really cool about 8.1 is the multi-window view that we have.

        So here are a few photos that are attached to a mail. And when I click one of these, notice that it opened up photos side by side with mail. This isn’t some weird preview app that only shows a few file formats or something like this. This is the actual app that is associated with the file extension. And so this could be photos, PDFs, it could be Office, it could be anything. And this happened just automatically.

        Another example of this, let me pull this off the screen, and I’m going to show you a link. And when I click this, it’s going to open up IE side by side with mail. You can see that there’s no restriction anymore on just one very small snapped app and then a huge app. We can now use the window 50/50. I can move the snap point so I can make one a little bigger, I can make the other one a little bigger if I want. And it’s not just limited to two apps side by side.

        So here in IE, I’m going to right click and do open link in new window. And suddenly, what I have here is two IE windows side by side. (Applause.) Yeah. Suddenly, I have something that is starting to look like a very productive work station. And I can move these windows around, I can put them where I want. We have maximize, we have resize, and all of a sudden you start to realize that there’s more than one way of doing awesome productivity. This uses all the pixels on my PC.

        And on this sort of smallish monitor, I can fit three. But if I had something like a 2550 x 1440 monitor, I could show four apps on the screen at once. And all of a sudden, now you’re way more productive than you could have been on the desktop. You’ve got your Twitter feed, you’ve got your full running mail app, you’ve got multiple browser windows or multiple mails up at once.

        And it gets even better. If I attach a second monitor, then suddenly I can do the same thing on multiple monitors at once. So I have any collection of apps across my monitors in any configuration I want, any size I want, blending desktop and modern apps across my screens. I can bring the Start screen up on one and just leave it, and this doesn’t just work for two monitors, it works for three, four, five, six, seven, as many as I have. And so this sort of shows the power of Windows 8.1 and the modern UI even on a desktop engineering workstation making you more productive.

        And then we think about Windows starting on —

        TAMI RELLER: A phone?

        JENSEN HARRIS: A phone. On 8-inch tablets, also doing the same multitasking and running all the way up across all of these devices, integrated with Xbox and out to any kind of workstation. And it is pretty fantastic.

        You can watch the full Tami Reller keynote about Windows 8.1 Product Enhancements [msPartner YouTube channel, July 9, 2013] presenting the complete high-end differentiation vs. the iPad and Android devices which contains the whole demo by Jensen Harris starting at [21:10] while the above part at [53:10], and the end of the demo is at [1:02:10]:

        And here is an overall First look at Windows 8.1 [Windows YouTube channel, June 5, 2013] video by Jensen Harris worth to watch as well:

        Jensen Harris from the Windows Team shows some highlights of what to expect in Windows 8.1 coming later this year as a free update for Windows 8 customers. http://bit.ly/10OM2Th

        2nd generation Microsoft Surface family of productivity tablets priced upto $2420 (when for an All-in-One configuration)

        September 24, 2013 2:22 pm / 2 Comments on 2nd generation Microsoft Surface family of productivity tablets priced upto $2420 (when for an All-in-One configuration)

        Indeed that is a winning positioning as evidenced by this
        Update: Delta to equip 11,000 pilots with Microsoft Surface 2 devices for their electronic flight bags [surface YouTube channel, Sept 30, 2013]

        Delta Air Lines is equipping its 11,000 pilots with electronic flight bags using the Microsoft Surface 2 tablet. Device rollout to pilots flying the Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 fleets will start later this year and all Delta cockpits are projected to be paperless by the end of 2014. The Surface 2 runs on the Windows RT 8.1 platform and provide flight crews real-time access to essential tools and the most up-to-date flight-related resources including key charts, reference documents and checklists while saving the airline $13 million per year in fuel and associated costs.

        imageA recent Gartner Survey Says Entertainment Accounts for Half of Device Screen Time [press release, Sept 17, 2013]. Statista made the following conclusion out of that:

        This was on the same day as the new Microsoft Surface family was announced which clearly showed that Microsoft is targeting its next-gen Surface products to the productivity market:

        imageWith this Microsoft clearly indicated its major direction for the 10.6 inch tablet devices. They are meant for the production uses and they cost consequently (much) more than either the high-end devices from Apple, Samsung and other global brands, or the top of the local brand Android tablets supplied by the extremely agile “race to the bottom” ecosystem of the so called white-box manufacturers.

        From  On The Record With Microsoft’s Surface Bosses Panos Panay And Brian Hall [TechCrunch, Sept 13, 2013]

        WHY KEEP SELLING THE SURFACE RT FOR $349?
        TechCrunch: Where does the $349 Surface RT fit into the Surface family, and who is the product aimed at?
        Panos: Surface RT still brings, for its value, a lot of the qualities of being productive. Now keep in mind that it will upgrade to Windows 8.1, and it will take on Outlook, and it will give you the features of being a productive tablet.
        It’s not as fast, but you are also not paying as much. Doesn’t have the second stop in the kickstand, it doesn’t have the better screen, but you are also not paying as much, so it truly is a value. If you want the most productive tablet from a value perspective what you are getting there, or from a cost perspective, I think that is what we are offering.
        Hall: We do think that we’re establishing a variant of the category. To date people have thought of tablets entirely through the iPad lens. We’re doing a variant of the tablet, which is the productive tablet. And so at the iPad level, if they come in and say do you want an iPad or a productive tablet, and we have Surface 2, it is the most productive tablet at its price point.”

        image

        Surface RT $349+…….. Surface 2 $449+……….…. Surface Pro 2 $899+
        NVIDIA Tegra 3 (T30)…..….NVIDIA Tegra 4 (T40)……..Intel Core i5-4200U 
        image
        Apps (included): Mail, Calendar, People, Internet Explorer 11, Photos, Music, Video, Games, Skype, Fresh Paint, Calculator, Reading List, Reader, Scan, News, Weather, Sports, Travel, Finance, Health & Fitness, Food & Drink, Help, Camera, SkyDrive, Sound Recorder and more

        Meet the new Surface [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Thinner. Lighter. Faster. Say hello to Surface 2. From Microsoft.

        Microsoft’s Surface event in under 4 minutes [The Verge YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        “Professional.” “Productive.” “Kickstand.” Microsoft unveiled its second generation of Surface 2 with an assortment of colors (both type and color). Here’s the full event… if the full event was just under four minutes.

        Microsoft’s Surface Tablet: A $900M Do-Over? [Bloomberg YouTube channel, Sept 22, 2013]

        Microsoft unveils its new tablet today, the Surface 2. What happened to the Surface 1? Unfortunately for Microsoft, not much. In spite of a massive advertising campaign promoting the product, the Surface was a flop with consumers. Bloomberg offers a by-the-numbers look at the dismal sales failure of the original Surface. (Source: Bloomberg)

        First impressions of Microsoft’s Surface 2 [CNNMoney YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Microsoft unveiled the Surface 2, a revamped tablet that features improved battery life, speed and a higher resolution screen.

        Microsoft Unveils New Surface at NYC Event [AssociatedPress, YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Microsoft has introduced new Surface tablets, including a professional model that allows people to use it more like a laptop or a desktop computer.

        Related Associated Press articles (usually republished by a large number of media):
        – Microsoft unveils new Surface, fixes shortcomings [Sept 23, 2013]
        – Review: New Surface tablets make typing easy [Sept 24, 2013]

        CNET News: Interview: Panos Panay [CNETTV YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        CNET’s Tim Stevens interviews Microsoft’s Panos Panay to discover the design philosophy behind the new and improved Surface 2 tablets.

        Related CNET article: Surface 2 declassified: How Microsoft made Surface into the tablet the world said it wanted [CNET news, Sept 23, 2013]

        Hands-on: new Surface 2 accessories add backlit keyboard, docks [CNETTV YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        A battery-pack Power Cover, a port-studded docking station and backlit keyboard covers debut for the Surface 2. We take a look in New York.

        Related CNET article: Surface 2 accessories step up: Backlit Type and Touch Covers, Power Cover, Docking Station (hands-on) [CNET review, Sept 23, 2013]

        Microsoft’s Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 get a boost from some useful new extras. The good news is, older Surface Pro users can take advantage, too.
        How do you improve upon the Surface, Microsoft’s tablet-as-PC that debuted last year? Internal upgrades are always welcome: more battery life, a better display, amped-up graphics. But the real killer apps of the next Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets might once again be the accessories.
        The Type Cover was the one part I loved the most about the last Surface Pro, for good reason: it worked great, felt small, and acted as a screen cozy. The Type Cover 2 and Touch Cover 2 make small but very important improvements: they both add backlit keyboards, and the Touch Cover 2 has far more sensors under its microfiber surface.
        The $130 Type Cover 2 has four colors now (2013 is the “Year of Colorful Electronics”) — cyan, magenta, purple, and black — and a quieter click mechanism, plus the pressure-sensitive touch pad works with Windows 8 gestures. The $120 Touch Cover 2 has faster type responsiveness in addition to the backlighting and added sensors, but I imagine most people would spend the extra $10 for the Type Cover. All of these will work with older Surface Pros and new Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets. Surface RT owners, you might be out of luck.
        There’s one other new cover, and it’s the one I’d buy: the Power Cover (price not available yet), a thicker Type Cover accessory that adds a battery pack, adding 50 percent more battery life, and charges the Surface (Surface 2, Surface Pro, and Surface Pro 2 — again, sorry Surface RT users) in your bag when not in use.
        Besides new keyboard covers, Microsoft also debuted a $200 Docking Station, a long-awaited (and needed) way to connect your Surface easily to extra ports while on a desk. Tall, angular, and black, it’s a tiny bit bulky but slides around the Surface Pro or Surface Pro 2, locking into the side ports and offering up one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0, audio in/out, Ethernet, and a Mini DisplayPort. It’s not much different from other charging docks seen on laptops and tablets, but the Docking Station also allows users to use the Type/Touch Cover at the same time — and, you can daisy-chain extra monitors via Mini DisplayPort.
        Microsoft will also be offering a Car Charger ($50) for Surface road-recharging, and a Wireless Bluetooth Adapter ($60) to enable typing covers to work when disconnected from Surface, which might be helpful for long-range operation — but, then again, you could always purchase a separate wireless keyboard for the same price.
        Do these make a difference in a crowded tablet market? The dock keeps the Surface competitive with equivalent Windows 8 tablets for business markets. The keyboards continue to be excellent. But the Surface 2 and Pro 2 accessories, while refined, are hardly surprising. They are, however, undeniably useful.

        Surface Pro 2

        Surface Pro 2 – from Microsoft [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        It’s a laptop in the body of a tablet. Meet the brand new Surface Pro 2.

        Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Hands-On | Engadget [Engadget YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Here it is: Microsoft’s powerhouse Surface Pro 2. As we’ve seen and heard already, Microsoft’s follow-up to the Surface Pro is thinner and considerably faster. We got our hands on a 256GB model to form some initial impressions and begin to determine whether this guy is worth the $899-and-up going rate, a $100 jump from the original Pro’s pricing scheme. Read on at Engadget:http://goo.gl/iHJ9nb

        Surface Pro 2: Microsoft’s Newest Tablet PC // Hands On [Mashable YouTube channel]

        The Surface Pro 2 may just be the most powerful tablet on the market. Microsoft has combined a new round of tweaks (including a wider kickstand and longer battery life) with enticing add-ons (200 GB of free cloud storage) that plays to its strengths. Would you buy one? Let us know in the comments.

        Surface 2

        Surface 2 – from Microsoft [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Surface 2 is so much more than a tablet. See all you can do with Surface 2.

        Microsoft Surface 2 Hands-On | Engadget [Engadget YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Microsoft just announced the Surface 2, the successor to the original Surface RT tablet. So of course, we did exactly what any self-respecting Engadget editors would do: we muscled our way to the front of the demo area and made sure we were the first to get our hands on it. Read on at Engadget: http://goo.gl/yH7AAu

        Surface 2: hands-on with Microsoft’s new Windows RT tablet that ‘doesn’t slow down’ [Engadget YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Tom Warren takes a close-up look at Microsoft’s new Surface 2 tablet running Windows 8.1 RT.

        Surface Workshop at Art Center College of Design [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Three weeks before launching its new line of products, the Surface design team took a trip to Pasadena, CA, where they held a 3 day workshop with renowned design school Art Center College of Design. The group of 11 students chosen for the workshop were the first people outside of Microsoft to see a new accessory the design team has been working on: a music attachment that clicks into a Surface and allows users to easily remix music. They asked the students: what else would you want to attach to a Surface? They code named these attachments blades.

        Remix Project — Linkin Park’s Joe Hahn [surface YouTube channel, Sept 23, 2013]

        Joe Hahn explains why the Surface Music Kit is an easy way to start remixing music the way you want. Learn more at http://www.surfaceremixproject.com.

        The related Microsoft press release

        Read also:
        – Announcing Surface 2, Surface Pro 2, and new Surface Accessories [Panos Panay on the Surface Blog, Sept 23, 2013]
        – Surface 2, Surface Pro 2, and new accessories announced [Windows Experience Blog, Sept 23, 2013]
        – SkyDrive’s new 200 GB plan: Enough storage for a photo every hour from birth to graduation [Inside SkyDrive, Sept 23, 2013]

        Microsoft unveils Surface 2, Surface Pro 2 and new accessories [press release, Sept 23, 2013]

        Note to editors: The battery life figure provided below was corrected following publication. Surface Pro provides up to 75 percent more battery life, not 60 percent more as was previously indicated.
        NEW YORK — Sept. 23, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced that the Microsoft Surface family of tablets is growing. Two new Surface models — Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 — along with an expanded portfolio of new Surface accessories, will be available at Microsoft retail stores, http://www.MicrosoftStore.com and select third-party retailers and commercial resellers in 22 initial markets, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States on Oct. 22 and China in early November. Additional markets will be announced in the coming months.
        Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 each benefit from significant updates, including improvements to processing power and battery life, to display and camera resolution, and to the Kickstand, now with dual angles, so it’s more comfortable for you to use your Surface on your lap or at your desk. Enhancements in Windows RT 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Pro make Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 even more powerful and customizable.
        Pre-order Surface
        Customers can pre-order Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 starting at 8 a.m. EDT on Sept. 24, 2013, athttp://www.MicrosoftStore.com, Microsoft Stores, and Best Buy in the U.S. and Canada, as well as select retailers in most Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 launch markets.
        Value-added services
        To help people get the most out of Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, customers purchasing either device will receive free Skype calling to landlines in more than 60 countries for one year, unlimited Skype WiFi on their Surface 2 or Surface Pro 2 at more than 2 million hot spots worldwide for one year, and 200 GB of free SkyDrive storage for two years.
        Surface 2
        Surface 2 is the most productive tablet for personal use. It offers all the entertainment and gaming capabilities you expect from a tablet, along with the ability to get work done. Surface 2 is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor, making apps run faster and smoother and increasing battery life to up to 10 hours for video playback. The 10.6-inch ClearType Full HD display now renders 1080p video for enjoying shows and movies, and its full-size USB port has been upgraded to USB 3.0 for up to four times faster file transfers. Camera resolution has also increased, with a 3.5-megapixel front camera and 5-megapixel rear camera, both capable of capturing 1080p video and featuring improved low-light performance, making face-to-face conversations with your favorite people crisp and clear. Even with these and other upgrades, Surface 2 is slightly thinner and lighter than its predecessor.
        Surface 2 will ship with Windows RT 8.1, bringing improvements in key areas such as personalization, search, multitasking, built-in apps, the Windows Store experience and cloud connectivity. The new Xbox Music allows you to stream millions of songs for free, and an updated Video app and great games from the Windows Store such as “Halo: Spartan Assault” will ensure that you never run out of ways to play. When it’s time to get serious, Surface 2 is pre-loaded with Office Home & Student 2013 RT and Outlook 2013 RT; simply click in a Touch or Type Cover and get to work.
        Surface 2 is available in 32GB and 64GB configurations[1]; it will start at $449.
        Surface Pro 2
        Surface Pro 2 is the successor to Surface Pro and, like its predecessor, is a true laptop replacement, capable of running virtually all your Windows software including the full Microsoft Office suite [2], as well as apps from the Windows Store. Surface Pro 2 offers the portability and simplicity of a tablet when you want it and the power and flexibility of a laptop when you need it. It is powered by a fourth-generation Intel Core i5 processor which, combined with other improvements, delivers increased performance and up to 75 percent longer battery life than Surface Pro.
        Starting at $899, Surface Pro 2 will be offered in 64GB and 128GB configurations with 4 GB of RAM and 256GB and 512GB configurations with 8 GB of RAM.[1]
        Full specs are available at http://www.Surface.com/pre-order.
        New Accessories
        Today’s announcement also includes seven new accessories that will make Surface even more flexible, more portable and more productive:
        • Touch Cover 2. Thinner and lighter than the original Touch Cover, measuring only 2.75 mm thin, Touch Cover 2 features backlit keys for even better readability. Touch Cover 2 is more rigid, registers keystrokes with greater accuracy and features updated sensors that support a variety of gestures across the entire keyboard. Touch Cover 2 has an estimated retail price of $119.99. It will be available for pre-order on Sept. 24 in all markets where Surface devices are available for pre-order.
        • Type Cover 2. Type Cover 2 features the same super-thin, lightweight design of the original Type Cover, but it’s now backlit and will be available in Cyan, Magenta, Purple and Black in the coming months. It’s also more rigid, providing a better lap-typing experience, and is designed to be noticeably quieter when striking keys. Type Cover 2 will have an estimated retail price of $129.99. It will be available for pre-order on Sept. 24 in all markets where Surface devices are available for pre-order.[3]
        • Power Cover. Power Cover delivers the same great typing experience you get with Type Cover while extending the battery life of your Surface 2, Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 by up to 50 percent to help you make it through that late-night meeting or the entire flight. Power Cover will have an estimated retail price of $199.99 and has a projected release date of early 2014.
        • Docking Station for Surface Pro. The Docking Station for Surface Pro lets you quickly connect Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 to desktop PC peripherals in a single step, taking you from laptop to desktop in an instant. While Surface Pro or Surface Pro 2 is docked, it can connect with an external monitor, Ethernet, speakers and power supply. PC peripherals connect via its one USB 3.0 port and three USB 2.0 ports. The Docking Station for Surface Pro will have an estimated retail price of $199.99 and has a projected release date of early 2014.
        • Wireless Adapter for Typing Covers. The Wireless Adapter for Typing Covers connects magnetically to any Touch or Type Cover, letting you type from anywhere in the room using Bluetooth technology, so it is even easier to connect Surface to a TV or monitor[4] and type from another location, such as the couch. Wireless Adapter for Typing Covers will have an estimated retail price of $59.99. It will be available for pre-order in the U.S. and Canada beginning Sept. 24.
        • Car Charger with USB. Car Charger plugs into most cars’ power or lighter ports and charges Surface without the need for an additional adapter. It also features a USB port to allow simultaneous charging of a phone or other device. Car Charger will have an estimated retail price of $49.99 and has a projected release date of early 2014.
        • Arc Touch Mouse Surface Edition. This special-edition Arc Touch Mouse has been updated to match the look of Surface. Like other Arc Touch mice, it is designed for comfort and flattens for portability. It connects via Bluetooth 3.0, freeing Surface’s USB port for use by other devices. Arc Touch Mouse Surface Edition will have an estimated retail price of $69.99 and will be available for pre-order in the U.S. and Canada on Sept. 24. Distribution in additional markets is projected to begin in the coming months.
        More information on Surface is available at http://www.Surface.com.
        Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
        The information contained in this press release relates to pre-release software products that may be substantially modified before their first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the software products when first commercially released. The press release is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the press release or the information contained in it.
        [1] System software uses significant storage space. Available storage is subject to change based on system software updates and apps usage. 1 GB = 1 billion bytes. See Surface.com/storage for more details. Initial quantities of Surface Pro 2 with 512 GB will be limited.
        [2] Office sold separately.
        [3] The Black and Purple Type Cover 2 will be available for pre-order. Other colors will be available in the coming months.
        [4] Adapter required; sold separately.
        For broadcast download:Visit http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/surface for b-roll clips.

        Microsoft could be acquired in years to come by Amazon? The joke of the day, or a certain possibility (among other ones)?

        September 16, 2013 12:40 pm / Leave a comment

        Discussion with one of my friends in the profession, let’s call him Gabriel (ezt diszkutáltuk itt Gábrielként szereplő szakmai barátommal az elmúlt 24 órában):

        GABRIEL:
        “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” [see: The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years]
        Continuing this logic Apple is the most vulnerable one. It is also true, however, if there is no profit, no investment, innovation and progress. Rather, I see it as the old world order is overturned, and there is a new world order being formed, where there will be  no dominant player like Wintel back in time, but there will be big groups of power. Majority of the profit will be harvested by dominant integrated players, like Samsung and Lenovo. The effect of transistor radio has been started to get felt, and there is a need of fundamental business model transformation. This is why MS is changing a lot, in the field of Devices & Services. Gadgets are getting cheaper and cheaper, OEMs do not want and can’t pay license fees, and therefore HW and SW integration is needed in order to offer a better user experience, and Cloud Services is going to be the big battlefield. And here’s the big loser could Apple, and there will be a giant battle between MS, Google and Amazon.
        GABRIEL:
        “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” [ld. The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years]
        Ezt a logikat folytatva, az alma a legsebezhetobb. Viszont az is igaz ha nincs profit, nincs befektates, innovacio es haladas. En inkabb ugy latom hogy a regi vilagrand felborult, es kialakuloban van egy uj vilagrend, ahold nem less dominans jatekos mint a Wintel idejen, de azonban lesznek nagy ero-csoportok. A profit nagy reszet az dominans integralt jatekosok mint a Samsung es a Lenovo fogjak aratni. Elkezdodott a tranzisztor radio effektus es alapveto uzleti modell transzformaciora van szukseges. Ezert valt egy nagyot a MS is, a Devices & Services teruleten. A kutyuk egyre olcsobbak lesznek, az OEM-ek nem akarnak es tudnak licensz dijt fizetni, es igy szukseges a HW es SW integracio hogy jobb felhasznaloi elmenyt nyujtson, es a Cloud Services lesz a kovetkezo nagy csatater. Es itt a nagy vesztes az alma lehet, es a MS, a gugli es az Amazon kozott lesz a titani csata.
        SÁNDOR:
        IMHO the great battle will be between Amazon and Alibaba-Tencent-Xiaomi-Baidu etc., the Chinese company or group going out of the fight in Mainland China into a world domination. I will not be surprised if on the Western side Amazon will first acquire ONE MICROSOFT now turned to the right direction (it is worth for everybody to orient him/herself towards Seattle), and then even Google. Facebook and the global financial interests clustering around it will be the third major group, which will enter the battle after the 2016 both with the great Western technologies group and the big technology group/company coming out of the Mainland China as a global force by that time. The great strength of the Facebook-rooted group will be the Facebook currency (not a typo), which will be able to surpass the U.S. dollar as much as any other currency. Now, this will of course come well after 2016. … and I dare advance this projection not as some kind of a SEER, but based on hard-core current facts, trends etc., as well as the result of 3 and a half years of unrelenting work.
        SÁNDOR:
        A nagy csata SZVSZ az Amazon és az Alibaba-Tencent-Xiaomi-Baidu stb. közötti belkínai küzdelemből világuralomra jutó kínai cég vagy csoportosulás között lesz. Nem lepődnék meg, ha nyugati oldalról először a most jó irányba váltó ONE MICROSOFT-ot venné meg az Amazon (érdemes Seattle-be orientálódni mindnkinek), majd még a Google-t is. A Facebook és a körülötte csoportosuló globális tőkeérdekeltségek alkotta együttes lesz a harmadik nagy csoport, mely majd 2016 után lép csatába úgy a nagy nyugati technológiai csoporttal, mint a Belkínából addigra globálissá lett nagy technológiai csoporttal/céggel. A Facebook gyökerű csoport nagy erőssége lesz a Facebook valuta (nem tévedés), mely úgy a dollárt, mint bármi más devizát überelni lesz képes. No persze ez már bőven 2016 után. … és ezt egyáltalán nem valamiféle látnokként, hanem kőkemény jelenlegi tények, trendek stb. alapján, valamint 3 és fél éves lankadatlan munka eredményeként merem előre vetíteni.
        GABRIEL:
        Amazon buys the MS? This is worth of being the joke of the day. Thanks for the entertainment. I am on a bike tour and just stopped. The guys asked why I started all of a sudden to guffaw. …
        [later] I just read over to the end. Even more, they will swallow even Google? Oh wow! And how, pray tell, will they do this? Oops! Giant market cap, but only just marginably profitable. Back last year they were in loss. So how will they scrape together 600 billion dollars? Perhaps the Chinese People’s Army will lend them? Amazon Q3 2012 earnings: $13.18 billion revenue, net loss of $274 million [engadget, Oct 25, 2012]
        GABRIEL:
        Az Amazon megveszi a MS-t? Ez feler a nap viccevel. Koszi a szorakoztatast . Motoros turan vagyok es epp megalltunk. A haverok kerdeztek hogy miert kezdtem hirtelen hangosan rohogni. …
        [később] Most olvastam vegig. Sot, meg a guglit is bekebeleznek? Oh wow! Es hogyan, tennek, pray tell? Oops! Oriasi piaci ertek, de epp hogy marginalisan profitabilisak. Tavaly meg vesztesegesek voltak. Szoval hogyan fognak 600 Milliard Dollart osszakapirgalni? Talan a kinai nephadsereg majd kolcson ad nekik? Amazon Q3 2012 earnings: $13.18 billion revenue, net loss of $274 million [engadget, Oct 25, 2012]
        SÁNDOR:
        My dear friend Gabhri’-el  (“man of God“)!
        I did not want to disappoint you. My point was simply to indicate in a gentle way that in the current, quite unpredictable situation even the most unimaginable outcomes are as much possible as yours. Glance at the posts I referred to in the closing part of The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years post of mine, and I hope you will agree with the above “indication statement” at least. Regarding the current market caps vs. that of Amazon I will draw your attention to certain historical stock prices given below. I will also dare to comment on them as suits my purpose here.
        		 SÁNDOR:

        Kedves Gábri-Él (“Úr embere”)!
        Nem szerettem volna csalódást okozni neked. Egyszerűen azt kivántam volna érzékeltetni, szelíd formában, hogy a jelenlegi, meglehetősen megjósolhatatlan helyzetben még a leginkább elképzelhetetlen kimenetek is legalább annyira lehetségesek, mint a tiéd. Vess egy pillantást a The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years című bejegyzésem befejező részében hivatkozott bejegyzésekre, és remélem legalább a fenti “érzékeltetési kijelentésemmel” egyet fogsz érteni. Ami az Amazonéval szembeni, jelenlegi részvénypiaci cégértékeléseket  illeti az alábbiakban felhívnám figyelmedet bizonyos történelmi tőzsdeárazásokra. Veszem a bátorságot magamnak ahhoz is, hogy a szándékaim szerint megjegyzéseket fűzzek ezekhez.

        imageLet’s see first Microsoft vs. Nokia (lássuk először a Microsoft kontra Nokia összehasonlítást):
        – Nokia had exactly 10 times higher share price ($39.72) at its latest peak (October 2007)than the one on the August 30, 2013 ($3.90)
        – Microsoft’s latest peak of $36.81 on the same date never recovered ever since despite its continuous good profit and cash accumulation performance
        – Even the acquisition of Nokia’s Devices & Services business on Sept 3, 2013 did not help much, while Nokia’s share jumpstarted by 60% since then (see the combined small chart on the right by clicking on it for a detailed comparison since the acquisition)

        image

        image

        imageThen go to an Amazon vs. Google comparison (lássuk ezután az Amazon kontra Google összehasonlítást):
        – Amazon’s share price is growing since November 2008 when it was $42.70 and it came to around $300 for the last two months.
        – At same time Google’s share price was growing at such a pace in much earlier period, since Nov 17, 2008 ($262.43) to Dec 21, 2009 ($619.98), then after sharp decline during 2010 recovered to a generally below $600 level till July 9, 2012 ($576.52), only after which started an Amazon-like sharp till May 13, 2013 ($909.18), then continuing to be mostly below of that with rise to $889.07 for the week of Sept 9, 2013. See a recent timeframe on the right.

        image

        image

        Final observations and conclusions:

        1. Microsoft swallowed the once most promising part of Nokia’s business, the one for which Nokia was famous for. Why the same thing could not happen to Microsoft when its upcoming 2 years of market trials will end in a similar niche market result in the Devices & Services space now to be joined under Stephen Elop’s leadership? That is Amazon acquiring that part of Microsoft the same way Microsoft that part of Nokia. Two years from now Amazon would not want anything else than that business only to join with one of its own (Kindle etc.). Meanwhile the rest of Microsoft will continue as an enterprise vendor with an alternative cloud platform to consumers as well.
        2. If that is a definite scenario (albeit one of many others) why the same thing could not happen to Google’s overall Motorola device and Android software business, thus leaving Google with classic advertising part. 

        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):

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

          2. 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]

        2. 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]

        3. 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].

        4. 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).

        5. 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.

        6. 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.

        7. 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.”

        imageComing 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
        image
        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.

        image
        #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
        image
        #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:

        image#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:

        image
        #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.
        image
        #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 life2
        2 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 ago3
        3 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

        image

        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):image

        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:

        image

        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.
        imageComparison 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.
        image
        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]

                image

                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.

                image

                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.

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