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Pixel Qi’s first big name device manufacturing partner is the extremely ambitious ZTE
Latest update: ZTE Light Tablet with Pixel Qi screen [June 3, 2011]
While this is not yet with the anti-glare anti-reflective coating and the reflective mode for touch is not yet implemented in this ZTE sample, this is how the ZTE Light with Pixel Qi might look like, the fully optimized version should be shipping in the third quarter [end of Q3] of this year.
(See also: Pixel Qi solar powered [June 3, 2011] and Shizu Pixel Qi Tablet shown at Computex 2011 [June 3, 2011])
++ Pixel Qi Joins with Shanghai Shizhu Technology to Develop a Family of Multimedia Devices Based on Pixel Qi’s Low-Power, Sunlight-Readable Displays [Oct 9-13, 2011]
Leveraging Pixel Qi’s technology, four tablets will be launched for China’s growing e-reader market, and are being shown at GITEX in Dubai. Combining Pixel Qi’s displays with Shizhu’s design creates an excellent multi-media experience in a slim, lightweight design with extended battery life. Shizhu has a key partnership with Southern Media Group, whose paper publications reach millions of subscribers daily, and whose media set the pace for investigative journalism, popular and gossip content, and online presence in China.
(See also: Content Really Matters for Tablets [Mary Lou Jepsen’s blog, Oct 12, 2011])
Latest update: Pixel Qi launches 10.1″ super thin 1280×800 screen [May 31, 2011]
Here’s a new comparison between Pixel Qi and the iPad followed by Mary Lou Jepsen’s status report on the latest Pixel Qi news, their first showing of the new 1280×800 thinner 10.1″ wide view screen.
[10:20 — 10:25]:
“We think our technology will be the dominant display technology in 5 years.”
[11:17 — 11:41]:
“It’s bit market driven from our customers because we get to exist and to engage some of the largest factories that have ever been made, and for that to work their economics need very high volumes. We need to have customers who really commit to large purchase orders almost before we start to design.”
See also: Mary Lou Jepsen of Pixel Qi at TEDxTaipei [May 9, 2011] (emphasis is mine)
Also watch: John Ryan COO of Pixel Qi and John Watlington Vice President of Hardware Engineering at OLPC
You have to consider, while it has been 23 months ago that I [i.e. Charbax] published my first Pixel Qi interviews from Taiwan (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), (12), (13), (14) while that might sound like a long time, in the display industry, 2 years is peanuts. Things move rather slowly there. Since then, there has been an economic crisis and a sort of re-focus from netbooks to tablets, although netbooks have sold more than 100 million units in 3 years, the display investments are focused on tablets. The display business can be considered to be the worlds biggest non-profit industry, the 5 biggest LCD makers who produce 90% of the worlds LCDs, produce for $120 Billion in screens every year but can only make small profit margins out of that because of the strong competition and the large volumes shipped. Those companies that produce the worlds LCD screens have very high costs, very high risks, little flexibility. Let’s hope Pixel Qi has amply well convinced the big LCD makers like Quanta, CPT, Chi Mei, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sony, Foxconn, let’s hope that they have all signed with Pixel Qi and that they are all right now in the process of tuning the mass manufacture of millions of these screens for all the worlds upcoming Chrome OS notebooks, ARM Powered Macbooks, Kindle4s, iPad3s, a solution for using the interactive UIs of Android on all the worlds e-readers. It would also be nice to double the battery runtime and improve outdoor readability on all the worlds Smartphones using Pixel Qi.
On Mobile World Congress 2011 the Chinese ZTE Announces Smart Terminal Strategy Aiming At the Middle-to-High-End Markets [Feb 15] (emphasis is mine):
The smart terminal strategy signifies ZTE’s accelerated move to embrace the middle-to-high-end markets, while demonstrating its commitment to offering an entire range of star products in the smart device market. The product portfolio will span from smart personal devices to smart home and business products. Currently very few companies in the industry can offer smart products in all three categories.
…
The latest IDC report shows that ZTE was among the top five in the world in terms of the sales volume of handsets in 2010. According to analysts, ZTE’s previous terminal strategy focusing on middle-to-low-end products obviously no longer fits with the current competition landscape and the company’s own position in the industry.
ZTE, with its dominant presence in the smart terminal arena and deep understanding of smart technologies trends, has been increasing its investment in this field. In the last two years, it has become a mainstream player in the global smart terminals markets with the introduction of star products including the first WM6.5 smartphone, Bluebelt 2, the Blade Android smartphone, and the Light tablet PC. The great performance of the Blade in high-end markets including Europe and Japan has also proved its operational ability in the smart products market.
Smart terminal devices at MWC 2011
ZTE is showcasing an entire range of smart terminal products to the industry at this year’s Mobile World Congress, including the Skate Android smartphone with its 4.3-inch super-large screen, the Amigo Android slide-cover phone specifically designed for young and fashionable users who like social networking; the Blade Android smartphone and the Brew MP handset, the F952, which is based on the WAC (Wholesale Applications Community) standard, as well as the Rugged Blade which incorporates “three proof” (dustproof, waterproof, and shockproof) functionality.
ZTE also showcased the Light series tablet PCs – including the 7 inch Light which is popular in Europe, Australia, and Russia, the Light 2 which will be the first tablet that uses the Pixel Qi’s sunlight-readable liquid crystal screen and DOLBY sound system technology, and the Light 10-inch, which features a faster processor, supports Android 3.0 and will be launched in Q3 2011.
In addition, with the Internet TV Box, ZTE is able to integrate TV as a consumer electronics product for home use into the camp of smart terminal products as it uses multiple Internet access modes including 3G, HSPA+ and WiFi to make it a novel integrated terminal combining Web surfing, HD movies, video calls, gaming, and DLNA at the same time.
Latest update: Pixel Qi launches new displays at Computex [May 19]
At Computex 2011 we will show two new additions to our family of sunlight-readable low-power displays. Both the new 7″ display (1024×600 resolution) and the new 10″ display (1280×800 resolution) build on Pixel Qi’s award-winning technology delivering excellent rendering of multi-media and e-reader content under any conditions – and at a power savings of up to 80% over conventional LCDs.
Latest update: Pixel Qi takes aim at Android tablets with higher-res 10-inch and 7-inch reflective LCDs (hands-on) [May 31, 2011]
… the team has returned to Computex with the 7-inch (1024 x 600) panel that was teased in December last year and a new higher resolution 10-inch (1280 x 800) panels offering an 80 percent power savings over conventional LCDs, according to Pixel Qi. In fact, the 10-inch panel consumes just 2.7W in color mode or 0.4W in reflective “eReader” mode.
We had the chance to see the new displays up close here at Computex and were immediately struck by the improvement in pixel density on the 10-inch panel. Making the leap to WVGA has been a major boon, as identical images looked sharper and better-defined than on the 1024 x 600 current-gen Pixel Qi display. The brightness on the new screen is lower than on its predecessor, but that’s because the company still hasn’t finalized things — we’re promised significantly better readability with the backlight off in the final product and brighter pictures when it’s on. The 7-incher, originally intended for mass production in the second quarter will now sample in Q3, to be followed by the more pixel-dense 10-inch model, which will hit production in Q4. Scope out the newness in the gallery below or jump past the break for video.
This is extremely good news for Pixel Qi trying to pursue device manufacturers to use its outstanding screen technology for more than a year already. Their press release is quite proud to announce that ZTE introduces 7” Tablet PC with Pixel Qi’s Sunlight Readable Low Power Display [Feb 14] (emphasis is mine):
Leveraging leading edge technologies from both companies, the Light 2 tablet combines the features and performance of a 1GHz processor running the Android operating system with a 7-inch high-resolution Pixel Qi display to offer an excellent multi-media experience in a slim, light weight design with extended battery life.
“We are excited to partner with Pixel Qi to bring their innovative display technology to market,” said Adam Zhang, VP & President of ZTE Mobile Broadband Device. “It brings a new level of performance to our family of tablet PC’s, rendering excellent images under any light conditions.”
“Working with ZTE, a world-leading telecommunication company with a global customer base, provides us with an extraordinary opportunity to address a world-wide market,” added Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO and founder of Pixel Qi. “We look forward to a long-lasting partnership.”
The display is manufactured in a Pixel Qi partnership with CPT (Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd.). Based in Taoyuan, Taiwan, CPT manufactures nearly 40 million displays per month and is the #2 manufacturer of small and middle sized LCDs in the world. [See more on that in my post Pixel Qi and CPT alliance for sunlight readability [Dec 22, 2010]]
The ZTE Light 2 tablet PC features a 12.6mm super slim design, Android 2.2, a hi-speed 1GHz processor and 4GB of memory. The 7-inch low-power Pixel Qi display has multi-touch capacitive touch screen and a screen resolution of 1024×600 pixels delivering a pixel density of 170 pixels per inch.
Pixel Qi’s award-winning 3Qi display technology renders quality full-color images plus full-motion video and, in high ambient light levels, its reflective mode contributes to the image allowing the backlight to be turned down or off. This delivers significant power savings and a very comfortable reading experience.
Update: Why Amazon Will Enter the Overcrowded Tablet Market [May 23, 2011] (emphasis is mine)
In a recent interview with Consumer Reports, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was asked if Amazon would make a tablet. He coyly responded with the comment “stay tuned” but gave no other specific details about a product of this nature. He basically confirmed, however, that something like this was in the works. He also pointed out that if Amazon made a tablet device, the reading experience would be at the center of its design.
My sources in Taipei say that the actual product is set to debut in time for the holidays and that the device will use a display similar to the one in the Nook and the Galaxy Tab. They also tell me that the original RFQ wanted a screen that could switch between an easy-to-read black and white E Ink-like display and a color LCD, but that this type of screen, which is already in the works by at least two vendors, will not be ready for the market until at least 2012 or early 2013. So Amazon was forced to use a 10-inch screen that was available now, which is LCD-based. It will also reportedly have a 7-inch model. And I am hearing it will sport a new version of Nvidia’s Tegra quad-core chip and will be using Android as its OS.
So at least quantity wise there are still problems with PixelQi manufacturing.
More information on this update:
Amazon Tablet PC with E Ink Holdings’ Hydis FFS screen [May 3, 2011]
The new 7” display has already been shown at CES 2011. See the detailed First look at Pixel Qi’s 7 inch display, new netbooks, tablets [Jan 6] report from Liliputing and the video from them:
Pixel Qi’s displays can function both as full color LCD screens and as high contrast, grayscale displays which are viewable without a backlight by relying on ambient lighting — much like an E Ink display. The difference is that while E Ink screens have slow refresh rates, a Pixel Qi display can handle full motion video whether the screen is in color or grayscale mode. The only difference is whether the backlight is on or off.
Turning off the backlight not only makes a netbook, tablet, or other device with a Pixel Qi screen readable in direct sunlight — it also drastically reduces the amount of power used by the display — which is often one of the most power-hungry components of a computer.
The new, smaller display has the same 1024 x 600 pixel resolution as the 10 inch model. Pixel Qi has also improved the viewing angles — although they’re still not great. With the backlight off, you can view the screen from pretty wide angles. But in full color mode, the colors start to wash out pretty quickly when you view the screen from the side, which is a bigger problem with tablets than netbooks.
And here is a report from the press conference on ZTE Looking to Break Into High-end in 2011 With Smartphone, Tablet, & STB Selection [MWC] [Feb 14] (emphasis is mine):
I attended ZTE’s press conference – it wasn’t the most popular at this event, of course. But they’ve done exceptionally well with their smartphone push in 2010 and are looking to up the stakes in 2011. They will do this with a selection of new smartphones and tablets geared toward the high-end.
….
ZTE’s campaign plans becoming somewhat clear from their companion press release ZTE Unveils Skate Smart Phone at GSMA Mobile World Congress [Feb 15] (emphasis is mine):
Inspired by the skateboard, the ZTE Skate is fashionably thin and lightweight at only 120g, featuring a large 4.3-inch screen to provide an optimal web surfing experience to consumers. It uses the Android 2.3 operating system, an 800MHz processor and the Adreno 200 graphics processing unit (GPU) to support the widescreen, high-definition display. In addition, the ZTE Skate also incorporates a 5MP camera, multimedia Bluetooth extension, A-GPS capability, hardware compass, and G-sensor.
The open Android operating system ensures that Skate can run an extensive range of apps, meeting not only the in-depth customization needs of operators, but also providing a user-friendly UI, and convenient and powerful multimedia features. Skate supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE at 900/1800/1900MHz and HSDPA/UMTS at 900/2100MHz, as well as WiFi internet access.
The ZTE Skate is expected to be available from May 2011 in markets worldwide. The smart phone launch also kicks off ZTE’s “Light Your Smart World” smart product strategy.
…
An IDC report shows that ZTE has become one of the world’s top five handset makers – in 2010 the company’s global shipment of handsets reached 60 million units and terminal products over 90 million units. Signature models such as the ZTE Blade and ZTE Light became bestsellers across multiple markets, achieving outstanding sales records in more than 30 countries including Europe and Japan, within a very short period of time. The ZTE Blade was also frequently referred to as the “Most Valuable Smartphone” by media in these markets.
Pretty impressive numbers which – also given ZTE’s very close releationship with the operators – is giving a pretty good chance that the Pixel Qi based tablet will become a bestseller quite soon.
ZTE has outstanding position and extraordinary market aspirations which could benefit Pixel Qi’s long unfulfilled aspirations as well . This could be best understood from the following press releases and reports:
China’s ZTE aims for top 3 in telecom gear [Reuters, Feb 14] (emphasis is mine):
It would be a major move for ZTE, which is smaller than its better-known Chinese counterpart Huawei, and holds roughly 5 percent market share in wireless gear, according to Bernstein Research.
“We want to be in the top three in terms of revenues and market share,” said Xu Ming, vice-president of wireless services in an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Founded in 1985 in the southeastern Chinese city of Shenzhen, ZTE earned about half of its revenues outside China last year by selling both handsets and fixed and wireless network gear.
It benefits from a low-cost base like Huawei, but its margins are lower because of its lack of scale in many business lines, according to analysts.
…
ZTE Records RMB100 Billion [US$15.2B] Contract Sales in 2010 [Feb 15]:
The fastest-growing vendor in the global telecom sector
14 February 2011, Shenzhen – ZTE Corporation (“ZTE”) (H share stock code: 0763.HK / A share stock code: 000063.SZ), a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, today announced that in 2010 it secured contract sales worth up to RMB100 billion and a growth rate of 26%, making ZTE the fastest-growing vendor in the global telecom sector.
ZTE made this milestone achievement despite the current economic turmoil. The global market and domestic market in China both experienced a deterioration in 2010, with an annual decline in telecom investment in each market by 3% and 14% respectively.
According to a Frost & Sullivan report, “Insights on 2010 Market Performance”, ZTE has the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) among the top vendors in the global market. It recorded a CAGR of 28.01% between 2008-2010 and 37.48% between 2006-2010.
ZTE has achieved 29% growth of its contract sales in overseas markets especially in Europe and North America. A growing number of leading players such as France Telecom, América Móvil, MTN and Softbank embark on co-operation with ZTE and appreciate the firm’s commitment to excellent delivery. ZTE’s terminal products — Blade, Racer and Light — were sold out in the European market for the first time, highlighting the company’s strong brand reputation.
The 3G investment in China market slowed compared with the peak of 2009, and fell from RMB 160 billion in 2009 to RMB 122 billion in 2010. However, tri-network integration boosted the investment in fixed networks which enabled ZTE to achieve 22% growth in the domestic market.
Stabilization in its market share of wireless product s and focus on the 3G terminal market will consolidate ZTE’s market position and guarantee its steady and sustainable growth in the future.
ZTE Announces Preliminary Financial Results for 2010 [Jan 28] (emphasis is mine):
(Hong Kong, 27 Jan 2011) – ZTE Corporation (“ZTE” or the “Group”) (H share stock code: 0763.HK / A share stock code: 000063.SZ) today announced its 2010 Preliminary Financial Results.
Applying PRC ASBEs, during the year under review, the Group’s revenue from principal operations was approximately RMB70,332 million [US$10.7B], representing an increase of 16.69% compared to 2009. Net profit attributable to shareholders of the company was RMB3,254 million, representing an increase of 32.39% against 2009 and earnings per share amounted to RMB 1.18. The increase in net profit was mainly attributable to Group sales growth and the recognition of investment income from the listing of one of the company’s associates, Nationz Technologies Inc. by way of an initial public offering.
As of 31 December 2010, the total assets of the Group increased by 20.40% to RMB 82,287 million compared to the end of the previous year; Shareholders’ equity attribute to the owners of the company increased by 37.28% to RMB 23,097 million compared to the end of the previous year, which was mainly attributable to an increase in retained profits during 2010 and the growth in share capital and capital reserves following the company’s placing of new H shares in January 2010 and the exercise of the company’s A share Warrants in February 2010.
ZTE says 2010 net profit up 32 pct on better sales [Reuters, Jan 30] (emphasis is mine):
ZTE 2010 net profit 3.25 bln yuan vs 3.1 bln yuan f’cast
* After extraordinary items, net profit down to 2.8 bln yuan (Adds details, background, analyst quote)
HONG KONG Jan 27 (Reuters) – ZTE Corp (0763.HK)(000063.SZ), China’s No. 2 telecoms equipment maker, reported a better-than-expected 32.4 percent rise in 2010 net profit on Thursday, helped by improving demand for infrastructure projects.
ZTE said it expects to make a net profit of 3.25 billion yuan [US$0.5B] for the full year 2010, better than expectations for a 3.1 billion yuan net profit, according to a poll of 21 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The company made a net profit of 2.46 billion yuan in 2009, it said in a statement posted on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It also had to take a one-time extraordinary item that lowered its net profit to 2.8 bln yuan, but did not give any further details.
“The bottom line results look fairly positive,” said Alen Lin, an analyst with BNP Paribas in Hong Kong. “Looking at the revenue figures, it’s likely that India has already contributing to the company’s numbers.”
New Delhi banned Chinese telecoms equipment on security concerns for most of last year and only allowed sales to resume in September, hitting revenues at ZTE and its bigger rival Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL].
Together the two companies grew up selling equipment to the Chinese mobile market but have increasingly become formidable players on the world stage scoring major contracts in Europe and some developing countries.
In the United States, however, there has has been opposition from some factions that have raised concern about the security threats posed by a Chinese company selling telecoms equipment to U.S. operators.
“The U.S. has never counted much for ZTE, and I think this will likely remain the case for at least this year,” said Lin at BNP Paribas. (Reporting by Kelvin Soh; Editing by Hans Peters)
Kinoma is now the marvellous software owned by Marvell
A leading chip, even SoC company buying a leading software company and moving immediately with that into the heart of the Android software and solution market? It is not so strange if one is considering Marvell’s strategy as expressed in my posts: Marvell ARMADA with sun readable and unbreakable Pixel Qi screen, and target [mass] manufacturing cost of $75 [Nov 4, 2010] and Marvell to capitalize on BRIC market with the Moby tablet [Feb 3]
Follow-up:
– First real chances for Marvell on the tablet and smartphone fronts [Aug 21 – Sept 25, 2011]
– High expectations on Marvell’s opportunities with China Mobile [May 28, 2011]
But, Kinoma as a marvellous software? Here is a video recorded yesterday at Mobile World Congress 2011 by IntoMobile in which Kinoma is demonstrated on the last year’s leading Android 2.1 based (now with 2.2 already) Nexus One by Google & HTC device, and this is the best proof of such judgement by itself (after that you can also follow the Android community responses on the Android Central’s Kinoma Play for Android beta):
“We take Marvell’s Kinoma platform for a spin with Kinoma Play. The third-party app runs on the Kinoma runtime, and beats out native apps in terms of performance and battery life. The demo speaks for itself.”
Truly amazing closing remark from Marvell’s Peter Hoddie in the video:
“Not just a bunch of application silos but you are really getting a suite of applications that works together and cooperates to give you the kind of user experience you expect to have.”
My own comment: a much needed enhancement for the whole Android world.
Some quotes from IntoMobile’s Hands-on: Kinoma Play – When third-party apps beat native app performance [Feb 14] article accompanying the above video (emphasis is mine):
What is Kinoma? Well, to put it simply, it’s an application platform that runs a virtual environment on your smartphone … But, unlike other runtime solutions (cough, Java, cough), Kinoma integrates with your phone at almost the hardware level, allowing it to optimize apps for speed and power usage. The end result are apps that run within Kinoma’s runtime that can outperform even the fastest native apps out there.
We got a chance to sit down with Kinoma’s Peter Hoodie at Mobile World Congress 2011 to see what the app runtime, recently acquired by Marvell, can do. We were amazed that Kinoma Play was able to load full-resolution pictures in it’s gallery in near real-time. In less than a second, full-res images were ready to zoom and pan in the Kinoma Play image gallery. We were also impressed by the super fast, but still smooth, scrolling capabilities of Kinoma. And, to top it all off, Kinoma Play apps were capable of cross-communication, allowing apps to share their data on demand with other apps.
The idea here is to get Kinoma out to market and get developers to start making apps using the Kinoma platform.
Then there is another article about Kinema by VentureBeat emphasizing another aspect: Chip maker Marvell debuts a cool mobile user interface with Kinoma Play [Feb 14] (emphasis is mine):
Kinoma Play is a user interface for smartphones, tablet computers, and other mobile devices. It can be built into a single application or become the user’s main interface for operating the multimedia apps on a phone. Kinoma Play is a beautiful, functional, fluid and fast interface. It works great with a touchscreen, letting you do tasks more easily, such as flipping through your music collection or zooming in on a face in a picture. Marvell acquired the small software company Kinoma with just 12 people a month ago.
…
Kinoma Play can move really fast. It loads a five megapixel photo in under one second, compared to three seconds for other software. You can put your finger on a touchscreen and hold it there. The software will zoom in on the spot in the photo where you are pressing. You can scroll through music or video collections as if you were looking at a carousel. And you can do that in either horizontal or vertical modes. If you run a video and then exit to the main menu, you can still see a video icon with the video imagery moving.
Founded more than eight years ago, the Kinoma team created software that ran on the Palm operating system and Sony’s original Sony Reader eBook device. Some 40 or 50 apps were built to work with Kinoma Play, which is not a full operating system but a subset of one, dubbed a user interface. Kinoma Play has been used on some phones in Japan and the Google Nexus One. It’s also being designed into phones that are coming out in the future.
And here Kinoma Play is shown on the Samsung Galaxy tablet as well in the accompanying video (from 3:58 on):
– “We’re a bunch of software guys who worked on things like the original Quicktime” media player, Peter Hoddie VP of the Kinoma Platform at Marvell said. “We have deep roots in software.”
– Peter Hoddie: For nearly a decade, Peter played a central role in defining, building, and promoting Apple’s trailblazing QuickTime technology.
– Brian Friedkin: As a Principal Engineer at Apple, Brian was a member of the small engineering team that brought Quicktime to Windows. He also researched and developed prototype QuickTime software targeted at small devices.
– Michael Kellner: At Apple Computer he was involved in open systems platforms, focusing primarily on developing multimedia infrastructure and core system software that was used in multi-platform QuickTime and became the basis for the development authoring platform Carbon in Mac OS X.
Marvell sells billions of chips each year for mobile devices. The combination of the two makes sense because Kinoma Play runs efficiently on both lightweight and heavy-duty hardware. This approach is called a “stack,” where Marvell provides not only the hardware but the software that makes the hardware functional.
“Marvell is a hardware company that sees what software means,” [Peter] Hoddie [VP of the Kinoma Platform at Marvell] said. “It is working its way up the stack.”
[Note that the Kinoma like platform software is far the best for Marvell strategies indicated above. They can add Kinoma to whatever Linux distribution (or other OS like vxWorks, u-boot, Windows Mobile 6.1/6.5, Windows CE etc.) they generally and to Fedora 11 and above which particularly with OLPC are using, as well as the Android used by their Moby tablet effort or elsewhere.]Hoddie said that Kinoma Play can work on phones with slow 150-megahertz processors because it is built into a very low level of an operating system. It has a performance advantage over software that sits on the highest level. It can thus flip through a collection of photos at a much faster speed than other photo viewers could. It works on either capacitive (multitouch) screens or resistive (single-touch) screens.
Kinoma Play can pretty much run on any operating system. Over time, Hoddie expects to make the platform available as open source software so that others can modify it for their own purposes. After all, Marvell wants to make money selling chips, not providing software. Users who learn how to use Kinoma Play on one device will find they can use it on another.
Hoddie said Marvell can take Kinoma Play’s user interface into new markets such as home automation controls and smart meters. In these markets, the hardware is often light years ahead of the software, which is often difficult to use because it has been designed by engineers who aren’t used to creating consumer software. The first phone with the new version of Kinoma is expected to launch at the end of February.
The press release from the new owner says not less than: Marvell Introduces Kinoma – Revolutionary Open Software Platform to Unify Applications [Feb 14] (emphasis is mine):
Marvell (Nasdaq: MRVL), a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today announced Kinoma®, a software platform that will dramatically transform the way consumers interact with the devices that fuel their digital lives. Kinoma is a new foundation for creating and delivering fast, simple user experiences for an unprecedented range of devices. Through its recent acquisition of Kinoma Inc., a visionary creator of mobile media software, Marvell now offers an experience and solution that is fully integrated from silicon to applications, creating new opportunities for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and manufacturers while freeing developers from traditional restraints.
“We are living in an exciting world of proliferating electronic devices. They are becoming a key part of our lives. More than ever consumers demand great ease-of-use and seamless connectivity across all these devices,” said Weili Dai, Marvell’s Co-Founder. “I am very excited to bring the talented Kinoma team to Marvell – it is our mission to coherently integrate our industry-leading hardware solutions with beautiful software experiences to enable the entire ecosystem to address this emerging demand. The addition of Kinoma – a simple, intuitive, easy to use software experience optimized for Marvell’s total silicon solutions – provides a unified look and feel across an array of products from handheld devices to smart appliances and smart furnishings. …”
…
To encourage broad industry adoption, Marvell will offer Kinoma under an open source license. Developers will be able to adapt Kinoma for any device they can imagine. Marvell will also provide two software development kits (SDKs). The first SDK is for application developers to fully integrate their content and services into Kinoma powered devices. The second SDK is for OEMs and manufacturers to port and customize Kinoma for their products.
…
Marvell will announce further information on developing with Kinoma and licensing in the coming weeks.
And here is the Kinoma value proposition video as released simultaneously by Marvell:
Kinoma Play for Android beta availability has been announced just on the forum of Kinoma, see Sign up for the Android beta NOW [Feb 13]. On their homepage (http://kinoma.com/) you can also signup for the Kinoma app developer SDK avaialbility. This was welcomed enthusiastically by Kinoma users, see Finally! [Feb 14]. Regarding Windows Phone 7 see what Kinoma said on that in the Some space for Kinoma on Windows Phone 7 [Nov 22, 2010] topic (emphasis is mine):
[as the issue has been raised by the creator of the topic]
I’m using Windows Phone 7 for 3 weeks. All I can say is that Zune is absolutely great as an audio player. Still I regret some Kinoma’s features, and all I can say is that, despite Zune, there is some space for Kinoma on WP7.
Indeed, we are missing a lot of features on Zune, and especially access to third party services (RSS, shoucast, Bing Images, Flickr, Last.Fm, Box.net, etc, etc, etc…)
Therefore the Last.fm team shall really reconsider the opportunity to join Windows Phone 7.
A Kinoma App to complete Zune would be fabulous.
WP7 is the future, but it would be even better with Kinoma.…
[as the issue has been answered by Kinoma]
Regarding Windows Phone, there’s currently no official way to develop native apps for it, and so no way to consider bringing Kinoma Play to that platform. Once Microsoft provides an SDK for native apps, we’ll definitely take another look.
— Charles Wiltgen
There was a somewhat more detailed answer to that from the same person in the Possible update of Kinoma [July 22, 2010] as well:
Actually, we can’t support Windows Phone 7 because that OS doesn’t have the ability to support native apps. Mozilla has announced that they’re not supporting Windows Phone 7 for that and other reasons as well.
In the meantime, “Windows Phone Classic” support is going to be important to Kinoma for several years. It’s going to continue to be the Windows Phone OS of choice for emerging markets and enterprise, and emerging markets are very important to indie developers like Kinoma because that’s where the volume’s at.
— Charles Wiltgen
Kinoma’s Success Story before the acquisition by Marvell
Kinoma Play in fact has been first introduced two and a half year ago for Windows Mobile smartphones, see Kinoma Introduces Kinoma Play — the world’s first mobile media browser [Aug 25, 2008]:
With Kinoma Play, smartphones now have digital media capabilities that meet, and sometimes even exceed, what users can do on their personal computers. Kinoma Play goes beyond organizing and playing a user’s video, audio and picture files, by bringing in media from around the Internet through the built-in Kinoma Guide, the most comprehensive catalog of the freshest, most diverse mobile media available.
Kinoma Play provides on-demand access from your phone to an unparalleled range of content:
- Media files – Play the music, video, pictures, panoramas and audio books on your phone
- Media services – Share your Audible.com, Flickr, iDisk, Live365, and YouTube accounts between your phone and computer
- Internet – Explore a terabyte of constantly updated, free streaming podcasts, music, radio stations, web-cams and audio books from thousands of providers including ClearChannel, CNN, NPR, Reuters, SHOUTcast, TUNED.mobi, and SomaFM
- Home PC – Access the gigabytes of music, video and pictures on your home PC from your phone – both on-demand streaming and download
…
Among the key innovations in Kinoma Play:
- Streaming podcasts – Instead of tediously downloading and syncing, podcasts stream on-demand, so users are always up to date
- “Media First” user interface – User interface elements all-but-disappear when viewing photos, listening to music, or watching video to keep the focus on the media
- High quality YouTube – Kinoma Play provides high quality YouTube video by playing the same feeds delivered to your PC, when bandwidth permits
- Integrated search – Search your phone, your home PC and the Internet to find what you want
- Menu Pod – A beautifully animated dynamic menu providing fast access to many powerful features
…
Pricing & Availability
Kinoma Play is available at the Kinoma web site (www.kinoma.com) for a one-time payment of $29.99. The software is compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 and higher.
It was immediately recognized by The Wall Street Journal: “Kinoma Play desperately needed by Windows Mobile users” [Aug 27, 2008]
10 days later the company announced that the first post-launch Kinoma Play update now available [Sept 5, 2008] for a wide of devices from Samsung and HTC as well as a few from HP, ASUS and Dell.
No wonder that just 7 months later Kinoma Play chosen as anchor application for Windows Marketplace for Mobile [March 31, 2009]:
The recently announced application marketplace will be included with all Windows phones based on Windows Mobile 6.5 this fall.
…
“Enthusiasts have embraced Kinoma Play as a ‘must-have’ application that shows how powerful the Windows Mobile media experience can be,” said Peter Hoddie, co-founder and CEO of Kinoma. “Windows Marketplace for Mobile opens up users to a new experience where they can discover and experience dynamic applications, like Kinoma Play, on their Windows mobile device.”
“As a creator of mobile media software, Kinoma offers technology that is a great asset to the Windows Marketplace,” said Steve Hegenderfer, group product manager, Microsoft. “We look forward to making it easy for millions of Windows phone users to download Kinoma Play, one of the latest mobile media browsers available for finding and accessing video, audio and pictures.”
At the same time it came that Kinoma to preview Kinoma Play for Symbian/S60 at CTIA Wireless 2009 [March 30, 2009]:
Kinoma Play for S60, slated for launch on Nokia’s forthcoming Ovi Store, lets consumers see and hear their favorite media faster.
…
“Kinoma Play for S60 is a natural progression for us,” said Peter Hoddie, co-founder and CEO of Kinoma. “S60 on Symbian OS is the world’s leading mobile platform, and that’s appealing because we want the whole world to be able to enjoy the Kinoma mobile media experience. Through Forum Nokia, we get access to devices like the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic which is a great showcase for Kinoma Play, and we’re excited about the prospect of being able to connect with Nokia customers through Ovi Store.”
As well as the news that Kinoma Play to debut in Japan on SoftBank handsets [March 31, 2009]:
Kinoma Play for SoftBank is available immediately for users of the advanced SoftBank X04HT and SoftBank X05HT handsets by HTC.
Then another 2 months later the news came that Kinoma Play Debuts with World’s First “Snapdragon” Phone on NTT DOCOMO, Japan’s Largest Mobile Operator [May 20, 2009]:
“Sorry iPhone fans,” said Peter Hoddie, CEO of Kinoma. “The unbelievable combination of NTT DOCOMO’s network, Toshiba’s stunning T-01A, and our own Kinoma Play set a new bar for how cool a phone can be.”
A week later the actual functionality of Kinoma Play has been extended with social networking services like Twitter and Facebook integrated into it. See Kinoma Introduces World’s First Mobile “Social Media Browser” [May 28, 2009]:
With today’s release of Kinoma Play, the best way to find, play and share media on a mobile phone is now also the best way to find, play and share media across social networks and media services like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Picasa.
…
- Cross-social sharing – Kinoma Play’s unique approach to supporting social media services and social networks breaks down the barriers between them and is key to its “share everything with everybody” approach. Users can share YouTube videos on Facebook, share Facebook photos on Twitter, share tunes via SMS, and more — because everything’s a first-class citizen, they can do it in a way that would otherwise be clumsy or impossible.
- Your mobile media home – Users can now create personal Home screens for fast access to their favorite stuff. Exclusive ZoomLinks let users jump instantly to almost anything — individual items, entire albums, even to specific features of any Kinoma Play application. They can make pages that collect friends’ Flickr photostreams, YouTube favorites and Twitter tweets, pages of “presets” to live radio streams and podcasts — the possibilities are infinite.
- Twitter – Allows users to tweet about the music, videos and podcasts they love on the world’s largest microblogging site. They can update their status, and photo-blog their day for friends, family and followers all around the world with built-in TwitPic integration. There’s even built-in search so users can see what the world’s saying about breaking news, or about themselves.
- Facebook – The world’s largest social network is also the world’s largest photo sharing site, and Kinoma Play is now the easiest, most convenient way for users to update their status and instantly share the pictures that tell the story of their life.
- App stores — Kinoma Play’s built-in store allows users to download and update their Kinoma Play apps. With two clicks they can install the Mobihand Store app to buy Windows Mobile apps for their phone, check out screenshots and YouTube video demos before they buy, and even download free trials.
- YouTube — Kinoma Play is now the world’s most comprehensive mobile application for YouTube, the world’s largest social video site. There’s an all-new user interface and tons of features — upload, browse, search, play, favorite, rate, comment, share and lots more.
- Last.fm — It’s the music service that “learns what you love” and now Kinoma Play lets users share their love of music with the world. Users can automatically “scrobble” while they listen, see and read about favorite bands and artists, find more artists like the ones they love and connect with what their friends are listening to as well.
- News Reader — Kinoma Play’s new built-in news reader application lets users read their favorite blogs and other news right within Kinoma Play, and play associated video, music, podcasts and pictures as well. By subscribing, they’ll automatically be notified about new posts as they become available.
…
- Flickr and Picasa — They’re two of the world’s largest photo-sharing sites, and they’re built right in. With Kinoma Play, the phone is an “infinite photo album” of personal photos, photos from friends and family and the most interesting photos taken by people around the world. Even upload new photos on the fly in just seconds.
And finally, just over a year of the introduction of Kinoma Play the news came that the company was Introducing Kinoma Play for Symbian/S60 phones [Sept 15, 2009] (emphasis is mine):
“Nokia’s goal is to provide the best media experience possible on mobile, so we’re thrilled that Kinoma Play is now available for Nokia S60 phones,” said Purnima Kochikar, VP, Forum Nokia and Developer Communities, at Nokia. “It’s exciting and fun for consumers who want to play and share the world’s best entertainment content, and indispensible for business users who need constant access to the latest business and financial news. Innovators like Kinoma show that the only limit to Nokia platforms is their imagination.”
Kinoma Play for Nokia Symbian/S60 is available immediately (in 11 languages!) for supported phones [of Nokia 5000, 6000, E and N Series] running S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1 or Feature Pack 2.
The platform story essentially has ended a week later by New Kinoma Play update: Twitter location, location, location (and more!) [Sept 22, 2009]:
Not only did we introduce support for a new mobile platform with the release of Kinoma Play for Symbian/S60, but we also released a very nice update for all of our Windows Mobile customers as well.
…
Kinoma Play’s Twitter app is now location aware. A new Set Location command in the Profile tab lets you enter a location, or use your phone’s GPS to choose your location from a list. A list of recent locations makes it super-quick to update your location.
Plus, a new Nearby search (GPS required) shows you nearby news, views and gossip. Who needs a watercooler when you’ve got Kinoma Play?
Plus:
- If a message contains links to a YouTube video or Flickr image, Kinoma Play now opens them directly in its YouTube and Flickr apps rather than launching a web browser. It’s much faster, and (unlike a web browser) always works.
- The Twitter app now shows the source (web, Kinoma Play, API, etc.) of individual tweets.
What came after this was “just” a great series of new content announcements with minor updates and a few reminders (sometimes via quoting 3d party reviews) of the values of the available features. There were just three anoouncements related to the “expansion/enhancement” of the platform:
– Kinoma Play powers the media experience of another Snapdragon phone [Nov 12, 2009] the the dynapocket SoftBank X02T
– See Kinoma Play on Nokia’s just-launched E72 [Nov 23, 2009] “how Kinoma Play turns the mild-mannered Nokia E72 (and other Symbian/S60 phones) into a mobile media monster.”
– Kinoma FreePlay and Kinoma Player 4 updates now available [Apr 2, 2010] as “YouTube recently made some unannounced changes that broke YouTube support in some of our products”
Below you can find the headlines of not less than 53 posts describing quite well the richness and usability of Kinoma as a multimedia platform:
“A Life Well Wasted” [podcast] now available on mobile with Kinoma Play [Sept 24, 2009]
New! Listen to The New York Times on mobile with Kinoma Play [Sept 29, 2009]
Feature focus: Flights [Oct 1, 2009]
Celebrate 40 years of Monty Python (nudge, nudge) with Kinoma Play [Oct 5, 2009]
Feature focus: Yelp – Quick, easy local business search [Oct 21, 2009]
Halloween treats from Kinoma (Spooky radio, podcasts and more!) [Oct 30, 2009]
Listen to SKY.fm + Digitally Imported with Kinoma Play: 60+ stations, aacPlus [Nov 2, 2009]
We’ve just released a new Kinoma Guide update that adds all currently-available SKY.fm and DI.fm (Digitally Imported) stations in all available stream formats — including aacPlus.
AAC is the standards-based successor to MP3. It offers far higher-quality than MP3 at similar bitrates.
Kinoma Play is the only mobile player that supports not just AAC, but also the even more-advanced aacPlus and aacPlus v2 (a.k.a. HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2) formats.
New! Now Mac users can stream video, music and pictures from home to phone [Nov 19, 2009]
I love being able to stream my entire personal media library on-demand. Not just because my collection takes up more space than any SD card could ever hold, but also because I don’t have to worry about ”syncing” my phone every time I leave the house.
Our customers seem to agree, and that’s why we built support for Orb — a free personal media server that runs on your PC — into Kinoma Play, Kinoma FreePlay and Kinoma Player 4 EX.
The only problem? Until very recently, Orb was only available for Windows. Today I’m glad to share that Orb is now available for Mac OS X.
If you’re a Mac users, it means that now you can enjoy the best way to play your entire library of movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, pictures and more while you’re out and about. Try it today!
Listen to SomaFM independent radio with Kinoma Play: 20 channels, commercial-free [Nov 24, 2009]
New! Listen to holiday music anytime, everywhere with Kinoma Play [Nov 29, 2009]
The Windows Mobile grade-and-pave (or, how to make your phone work like new again) [Dec 3, 2009]
New! Watch 500+ TEDTalks on your phone with Kinoma Play [Dec 15, 2009]
“Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show” now available on your phone with Kinoma Play [Dec 17, 2009]
New! 938 audiobooks from Project Gutenberg [Dec 30, 2009]
Can’t remember where you stopped? Kinoma Play does! [Jan 5, 2010]
How to play Zune Pass music on your WinMo and Symbian/S60 phone [Jan 8, 2010]
New! Learn HowStuffWorks [podcasts] on your phone with Kinoma Play [Jan 13, 2009]
PalmAddict readers: Kinoma Play best media app for Windows Mobile [Jan 21, 2010]
New! Stay on top of tech with 650+ videos from O’Reilly TV [Jan 29, 2010]
Watch, re-watch and share Super Bowl 2010 commercials [Feb 8, 2010]
New! The Muppets Muppets Muppets on your mobile mobile mobile [Feb 11, 2010]
Two ways to send a direct message with Twitter for Kinoma Play [March 8, 2010]
Kinoma Play one of “7 best and most gorgeous applications for Symbian” [March 16, 2010]
Enjoy “Maximum Fun” shows on your phone with Kinoma Play [March 24, 2010]
New! Watch FreeBe TV shows on your phone with Kinoma Play [March 25, 2010]
New! Catch shows by Scott Johnson and friends on your phone with Kinoma Play [April 5, 2010]
JAMM: “I am an app junkie…I bought Kinoma Play and haven’t looked back” [April 7, 2010] (emphasis in red is mine)
David Gray‘s published his review of Kinoma Play on Just Another Mobile Monday this weekend. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer Easter present!
…
“I tried it, was so impressed by it’s graphics, intuitive ease of use, and its inclusion under-one-roof of some functions I already had individual apps for, I immediately bought the pay-version, called Kinoma Play, and haven’t looked back. I was also able to un-install a bunch of those now unnecessary space/memory wasters.”
Adam Carolla’s ACE Broadcasting shows now available on your phone with Kinoma Play [April 12, 2010]
Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist podcast “now a thing!” in Kinoma Play [May 14, 2010]
The Really Mobile Project: Kinoma Play “a bloody good app” [May 20, 2010]
The site published an excellent review of Kinoma Play. … the author — mobile technology expert Ben Smith — gets to the heart of both the what and the why of Kinoma Play. To quote (emphasis mine):
So what is Kinoma Play? At heart it’s a media player, but that description sells it short. It’s an audio player, picture viewer, a video player, a podcast manager (and player), a YouTube client, plus it’s got interfaces to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
The trouble is, that longer description makes it sound like a mess — trying to be all things to all people… But it’s not. And that’s actually made me a fan. It’s the polish…the refinement, the usability.
I quickly re-produced my media library (normally on my iPhone) onto my now-ageing N82 — podcasts, audio in multiple formats (including non-DRM content from the iTunes Store) and RSS feeds were all viewable just as easily as the iPhone. It’s advanced enough to keep the geeks happy and I’d happily give it to a ‘non-geek’ to use too, it’s that good.
Kinoma Play YouTube app update now available [May 21, 2010]
Follow the FIFA 2010 World Cup on your phone with Kinoma Play [June 10, 2010]
Kinoma Play Flights update now available [June 12, 2010]
Enjoy TWiT.tv shows anytime, everywhere (now with video!) [June 15, 2010]
177 (live!) London traffic cameras now available for your phone with Kinoma Play [June 22, 2010]
Google Reader update for Kinoma Play now available — speedier, more compatible [June 24, 2010]
One of the apps we use every day is Kinoma Play’s Google Reader app. It’s a fast, easy way to keep up with your favorite sites, and the full-text searching makes it incredibly easy to find posts on the exact topic you want no matter what feed or folder they’re in.
The reason we keep the word “Beta” painted on is that Google hasn’t quite settled on its “API”, which is what software developers like Kinoma use to access your Google Reader feeds. That means that they can change it anytime without notice.
That’s exactly what just happened, and so today we have a shiny new update of the Google Reader app for you!
Celebrate Michael Jackson’s legacy with Kinoma Play [June 26, 2010]
New! AccuRadio comes to Kinoma Play [July 6, 2010]
200+ BBC podcasts, new in Kinoma Play [July 13, 2010]
New! Hear spellbinding stories and tales from “The Moth” on your phone [July 22, 2010]
New! 87 radio stations from 1CLUB.FM now available on your phone [July 30, 2010]
Loads of new PBS content now available in Kinoma Guide [Aug 26, 2010]
Next Best Thing to Being There: Burning Man 2010 in Kinoma Play [Sept 1, 2010]
San Francisco’s cool new pirate radio station now available on your phone with Kinoma Play [Sept 16, 2010]
New Kinoma Play and FreePlay updates bring improved YouTube support [Sept 17, 2010]
New! Play hundreds of Sesame Street videos on your phone with Kinoma Play [Sept 21, 2010]
(Way) Up, up and away with NASA and Kinoma Play [Sept 23, 2010]
The world’s best movie podcasts, now available in Kinoma Play [Sept 30, 2010]
New! Scary stuff to get you in a spook-tacular mood for Halloween [Oct 26, 2010]
Bring the spirit of the holidays everywhere you go with Kinoma Play [Nov 16, 2010]
Remember John Lennon’s life and music with Kinoma Play [Dec 9, 2010]
New! Slate and Slate V come to Kinoma Play [Dec 15, 2010]
Enjoy Podcast Awards’ best podcasts of 2010 with Kinoma Play [Jan 12, 2010]
Marvell to capitalize on BRIC market with the Moby tablet
Follow-up: First real chances for Marvell on the tablet and smartphone fronts [Aug 21 – Sept 25, 2011]
Brazil, Russia (sort of), India, and China (BRIC) are the current leading lights for most of the businesses looking for high growth markets in 2011. This is not different for the ICT industry either. See more about that in the “Analysts about the BRIC market potential” part of this post far below. This will also be showing how promising is the new BRIC-oriented end-customer strategy of Marvell.
If one knows very little or nothing about Marvell it is recommended first to read my preceding post Marvell ARMADA beats Qualcomm Snapdragon, NVIDIA Tegra and Samsung/Apple Hummingbird in the SoC market [again] [Sept 23, 2010 with updates upto Jan 17, 2011].
Follow-up: High expectations on Marvell’s opportunities with China Mobile [May 28, 2011]
No wonder that Marvell has started to implement one of its long-range end-customer strategies, the so called Moby (see above and/or click) first in India then in other parts of the BRIC. As PC World (IDG News) reported in its Tablets Using Marvell’s Moby Design in India Soon [Jan 27] article (emphasis is mine):
Tablet computers built to Marvell’s Moby reference design should launch in India in the first half of this year, an executive of the company said on Thursday.
The chip company is partnering in India with consumer electronics vendors, mobile handset makers, and mobile service providers who will be offering the product under their own brands, said Anand Ramamoorthy, Marvell’s country head of sales and marketing in India, on Thursday. He did not disclose the names of the partners.
Marvell announced in March last year a US$99 prototype for a multimedia tablet targeted at education.
The basic configuration in India is likely to be priced closer to 10,000 rupees ($216) because of the high import duties and the cost of distribution in the country, Ramamoorthy said. In emerging markets, there isn’t a model whereby hardware costs are subsidized by service contracts, he added.
India and China will be the first among emerging markets where the tablets will ship, with plans to also introduce the products in Latin America and Eastern Europe.
As emerging markets are price-sensitive, Marvell’s strategy is to position a low-cost configuration as a volume product.
In India, the company is expecting its partners to deliver for 10,000 rupees a 7-inch tablet with a capacitive LCD screen, that will be built around the Armada 168 processor at 800 MHz, and offer 720p video and Wi-Fi connectivity. It will run the Android operating system and other open source software, Ramamoorthy said.
The actual price in these markets will depend on partners and their business and margin models, Ramamoorthy said. Some partners may decide to offer high-end, more expensive devices as well, he added.
Marvell will have two primary manufacturers globally, including Foxconn. Partners selling the tablets will however be free to choose manufacturers from a pool of Marvell’s manufacturing partners, Ramamoorthy said.
Follow-up: Kinoma is now the marvellous software owned by Marvell [Feb 15]
Marvell’s current on-line press kit [Jan 9] contains the following documentation and images related to the Moby design:
– Mobylize Prototype – It’s Time to Mobylize for America’s Students! [Fast Facts, Jan 3]
– Marvell Showcases Moby Tablet and Extensive Line of Other Advanced Connected Devices for the Always-On Lifestyle at International CTIA Wireless 2010 [CTIA Press Release, March 23, 2010]
– Marvell Drives Education Revolution with $99 All-in-One Mobile Tablet Designed for the World’s Students [Press Release, March 18, 2010]
Marvell Moby White Vertical: students screen
In the latest Jan 3 Fast Facts (linked above) the following prototype features and technical specifications are given:
Moby Prototype Features
• Future-Proof Learning: Mobylize leverages the powerful and open Android OS platform to ensure an open and growing ecosystem of learning technologies
• Multi-Sensory Interaction: Mobylize’s touchscreen interface, as well as video and audio capabilities, creates a highly interactive and engaging learning experience.
• Always-On Technology: With 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity and web browsing with Adobe® Flash® Lite 3.1, students can learn seamlessly with online and offline technologies in today’s always-on environment.
• Multimedia Education: Integrated multi-media player, photo viewer, instant messaging and more drive learning potential exponentially beyond the classic textbook.
• Drives Green Classroom: Marvell technology provides high energy-efficiency that energizes hours of learning.TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
• ARMADA 168 (1 GHz), WMMXTM multi-media acceleration engine
• 256MB DDR2 RAM
• Android OS
• 2D graphics engine, WMMX, QdeoTM intelligent color, remapping technology
• 10.1” TFT LCD display, 1024 x 600 resolution, Capacitive touch panel
• 4GB NAND flash, Micro-SD up to 16GB
• Two stereo speakers (1W each), built-in microphone
• USB 2.0 (x1 host, 1x device) • Micro SD card, MIC and Ear phone jack, 12V DC-in
• 802.11 b/g connectivity
• 2800mAh; 7.4 volts battery
Note however that in the press release of last March (also linked above in PDF form) the higher ARMADA™ 600 class processor has been indicated:
About Marvell Moby Tablet
Powered by high-performance, highly scalable, and low-power Marvell® ARMADA™ 600 series of application processors, the Moby tablet features gigahertz-class processor speed, 1080p full-HD encode and decode, intelligent power management, power-efficient Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM/GPS connectivity, high performance 3D graphics capability and support for multiple software standards including full Adobe Flash, Android™ and Windows Mobile. The ultra low power Moby tablet is designed for long-battery life.
as well as for the Moby MED reference design announced in another press release Marvell Drives ‘Telehealth” Revolution with Moby MED Always-On Medical Tablet [Apr 21, 2010]. Note that Moby MED devices are quite different since (as per the press release):
Healthcare-focused Tablets With Multiple Simultaneous Viewing Screens Including Video Conferencing and Live TV Allow Consumers to Manage Medical Records, Conduct Live Physician Consultations, View 3D Images and Sonograms, Collect Real-Time Data From Personal Monitoring Devices, Access Information From Online Sources, and More.
which is currently looking much more suitable for the developed markets.
The remark, that “Some partners may decide to offer high-end, more expensive devices as well” could — however — point to the fact that even for the education market Marvell partners could use a higher end tablet offering as well, at least as an alternative. This could also explain why a Moby2 prototype design is already existing as evidenced by the image gallery shown above.
On CES 2011 the ARMADA 168 based Moby prototype has also been called Marvell 100 series tablet [Jan 6, 2011].
[CES 2011] Marvell’s foray into the tablet market sees this rather cute and well designed model, the 100 series. Unlike other tablets that are in the market, this one comes with Android 2.2 (instead of 2.1), while sporting a rather young, all-white design with all the lines in the right places. A microSD memory card slot is there for expansion purposes, and you won’t get multi-touch support on the 10” display which is a bummer, so forget about zooming in or out in Angry Birds. There is 1GB of internal memory inside, while Wi-Fi connectivity is supported although 3G will not be present when it hits the market sometime this year for $199 a pop [with $99 manufacturing cost — see in the below video]. Of course, as with Marvell’s OLPC project, the 100 series will target the educational environment more. It is pretty heavy, but it won’t weigh a ton like most textbooks. Looks hardy enough to stand up to the rigors of restless kids, too! Interestingly enough, being an Android-powered device, it has more than the usual 4 buttons of Home, Menu, Back and Search, but will include the “Up” and “Down” buttons, too.
while the more performant one which is based on ARMADA 600 is also called 600 series accordingly. More information:
– Marvell 600 series tablet has interesting implications [6 Jan]
– Marvell 600 Tablet Series Graphics Performance Demo at CES 2011 [Jan 24]
– and the video Mobylize Tablet on ABC News: Good to Know [Jan 10, 2011]
Note while watching the video that the LCD screen used in the tablet has wide viewing angle.
The title of the above is mentioning “Mobylize” instead of “Moby”. This is a typical confusion. The truth is that Mobylize is:
a campaign aimed at improving technology adoption in America’s classrooms
which was announced with the One Laptop per Child and Marvell Join Forces to Redefine Tablet Computing for Students Around the World [May 27, 2010] by which:
Marvell and OLPC Empower Education Industry to Revolutionize the Classroom Experience through Advanced, Affordably-Priced Tablets
and which was extensively discussed in my post Marvell ARMADA with sun readable and unbreakable Pixel Qi screen, and target [mass] manufacturing cost of $75 [Nov 4, 2010].
The campaign (http://www.mobylize.org/) has a Tablet Demos page which absolutely clarifies the education tablet offering as:
7″ Tablet with a 7″ TFT LCD display of 800 x 480 resolution, Bluetooth 2.1 and with form, size and weight as shown below:
Marvell Moby 7 inch tablet
10″ Tablet with a 10.1″ TFT LCD display of 1024 x 600 resolution and with form, size and weight as shown below:
Marvell Moby 10 inch tablet
with the rest of the specifications the same, i.e.
– Processor: ARMADA 168 (1 GHz), WMMX™ multi-media acceleration engine
– Memory: 256MB DDR2 RAM
– OS: Android
– Graphics/Video: 2D graphics engine, Various format video decode up to 720p through S/W, Qdeo™ intelligent color remapping technology
– Display: with resistive touch panel
– Storage: 4GB NAND flash, Micro-SD up to 16GB
– Audio: Built-in microphone, Two stereo speakers
– Sensors: Accelerometer [s ?for 10″ one?]
– Ports: USB 2.0 (x1 host, 1x device), 2-in-1 card reader, MIC and Ear phone jack, 12V DC-in
– Connectivity: 802.11 b/g
– Battery: 2200mAh; ~8 hour use
– Example Features: Complete web browsing experience with Adobe® Flash® Lite 3.1, Multi-media player, Photo viewer, Instant messaging
Currently the Mobylize Development Kit with the 10″ version is available for pre-order from Aluratek for $299. Till Feb 28 there is CES Promotion with 20% off. It is shipping April 15th. Aluratek will introduce a similar 10″ product of its own in February, called Cinepad, which is ensuring Moby tablets availability in the US as well:
– CES 2011: Aluratek Announces Libre Air eBook Reader with Wi-Fi and
New Cinepad Android Tablet [Jan 6]
– Aluratek Cinepad & Libre Coming In April [VIDEO] [Jan 13]
– CES 2011 – Aluratek Cinepad [Jan 10]
– The Year of the Tablet [Jan 18]
Within Mobilize there was also an app competition (see: Marvell to Fund Next Generation Education Apps [Sept 27, 2010]) with recent results as per Marvell Announces Winners of Its ‘$100K Challenge’ Tablet App Competition [Jan 6]:
The winner of the $50,000 top prize is the application Battleship Numberline, a multitouch educational game that helps strengthen math skills. “Improving your ability to estimate along a number line correlates with math performance all the way up to 6th grade,” said lead developer Derek Lomas, a 29-year-old Ph.D. student at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. “Marvell is doing great things for the future of education by seeding a development community for educational apps.”
The winner of the second-place prize of $30,000 is the application Imagine Mathematics, which illuminates math disciplines like algebra, trigonometry and calculus by taking students behind the scenes and showing them how these disciplines are used in the creation of animated movies from studios like Disney and Pixar. The creator of the app is 36-year-old Seth Piezas, a former technical director at Pixar Animation Studios who now runs his own interactive agency, Colabi.
“I want high school students to see the practical applications of math and the cool things they can create,” said Piezas. “The tablet computer really is an amazing platform for the classroom. I just wish I had something like it when I was a kid.”
The third-place prize of $20,000 goes to Homework Management System, an application that allows students to create quiz questions based on what they have learned in the classroom, which teachers then can distribute to other students for quiz-show style gaming or for homework assignments.
More information:
Marvell ARMADA beats Qualcomm Snapdragon, NVIDIA Tegra and Samsung/Apple Hummingbird in the SoC market [again] [Sept 23, 2010 with updates up to Jan 17, 2011] with all SoC product information including background
Marvell ARMADA with sun readable and unbreakable Pixel Qi screen, and target [mass] manufacturing cost of $75 [Nov 4, 2010]
Marvell beaten by Chinese chipmakers in sub 1,000 yuan handset procurement tender of China Mobile [Nov 15, 2010]
Analysts about the BRIC market potential
In recent Forrester report (see the Forrester: Global Tech Economy Will Substantially Outgrow The Overall GDP In 2011 [Feb 2] press release copy since on the Forrester’ site it is not more available) the #1 prediction is that:
The Tech economy will substantially outgrow the overall GDP.
with the following details:
The global technology industry is in a multiyear up-cycle of industry innovation and growth, during which tech investment grows faster than overall economic growth. This cycle, which is already under way in the US and other developed countries, is based on adoption of a new generation of Smart Computing and Cloud Computing technologies. We expect this cycle to ensure 7.5% growth in US IT purchases, and 7.1% growth globally (measured in USD), despite economic worries in Europe, uncertainties about the strength of economic recovery in the US, and the potential for slowing growth in China.
… in 2011, Brazil, Russia (sort of), India, and China (BRIC) will see some of the fastest (11%) growth in IT purchases in 2011, with other emerging markets such as South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Chile, and Mexico seeing similarly strong growth.
The 2011 Accenture Consumer Electronics Products and Services Usage Report which came out under the title “Finding Growth: The Emergence of a New Consumer Computing Paradigm” [Jan 3] has some very significant survey results regarding the BRIC market (in text empasis is mine):
[p. 4, Executive Summary part] A widening enthusiasm gap
The urban consumers in Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC markets) have leapfrogged the average mature market consumer in their use of technology. They have a much greater appetite for consumer technology from many measures, including the devices they own, their purchase plans and their use of applications. Counter to common misperceptions, a large segment of BRIC consumers are more interested in the newest and most innovative technologies than in the lower price point technologies with less functionality. BRIC market consumers have a higher rate of adoption of the newest technologies and a greater willingness to pay premiums for features and enhancements. For instance, a full 84 percent of Indian respondents say they will pay a premium for enhanced smartphone capabilities. That translates into roughly 148 million consumers.
In the BRIC markets, in particular, prospects are bullish for spending on consumer electronics in 2011. This is especially true in China, where this year’s purchasing plans for technologies such as smartphones and high-definition TVs are staggering. Assuming China has an estimated 167 million urban households and an estimated urban population of 434 million people in the consuming age, 38 million high-definition TVs and 63 million smartphones will be purchased there in 2011.
In contrast, mature markets are more conservative and price sensitive. Consumers in the US, Japan, Germany and France have less ambitious plans to purchase new devices in 2011, use fewer applications overall, and are far less willing to pay premiums for new features and enhancements. And, while consumers 55 years or older in mature markets tend to have higher disposable income (and therefore greater ability to spend on technology), they more often wish to spend as little as possible to keep up on the technology adoption curve. In contrast, younger consumers in BRIC markets demonstrate a huge appetite for electronics, but like millennials around the globe, they are often harder to please, less loyal and have less disposable income to spend.
…
A new consumer technology paradigm
…
Another benchmark of the new technology paradigm is that as new technologies emerge, consumers are increasingly quick to stop using particular devices if they feel they have the same functionality in another device that performs the same function better—especially in BRIC markets. Twelve percent of consumers surveyed in the BRIC markets stopped using mobile phones in 2010 because they had another device with the same functionality. This compares with only five percent of consumers in mature markets who jettisoned their mobile phones. And, in both mature and emerging markets, younger people appear to be far more willing to let go of duplicative devices.
…
[p. 5] In summary, in the fast-changing consumer electronics industry, exploiting big growth opportunities is becoming increasingly difficult. Our research helps consumer tech companies with this challenge by offering information on the hottest current and emerging geographic, product and application markets for consumer technology. For instance, the highest spending in 2011 (and we believe for years to come) is projected to be in urban and semiurban BRIC markets. Demand for mobile applications such as banking continues on a strong growth trajectory. And new technologies (such as tablet PCs and e-book readers) and next-generation technologies (such as smartphones, 3-D and Internet-capable TVs) are projecting substantial growth.
…
[p. 13] Interestingly, one-quarter of respondents globally don’t plan to purchase any consumer technologies in 2011. More than one-third (37 percent) of those 55 and older don’t plan any purchases, compared with only 15 percent of those between 18 and 24 years of age. And a stark contrast in purchasing plans exists between mature and BRIC markets: 40 percent of respondents in mature markets don’t plan to purchase any consumer electronics in 2011, compared with only 9 percent of those in the BRIC markets.
…
[p. 16] Our study shows that BRIC markets have far greater enthusiasm for technologies and appetite for purchasing them than non-BRIC countries, especially the latest devices such as tablet PCs. One could infer that the lower use of computers in BRIC countries is an indication that these consumers are finding alternate devices to do those activities formerly done on the computer—and may, in fact, have simply leapfrogged the step of owning a computer that those in mature markets had to take because at the time there were no other options.
…
[p. 24] When reviewing information on “heavy users” of activities—those who do the activity at least five hours per week—interesting patterns emerge. For instance, among millennials in the BRIC markets who are heavy watchers of shows and videos, a larger share (44 percent) watch them on a PC or laptop than on a television (chosen by 30 percent).
… Of those who don’t own an e-book reader, more than half said that it is because they prefer paper books. But 20 percent said they preferred other electronic devices than an e-book reader
for reading books, such as a phone, PC or tablet PC. In emerging markets, the percentage of respondents who prefer other electronic media for e-book reading is much higher: 34 percent in BRIC markets versus 7 percent for mature-market countries.…
[p. 34] The tablet PC: The hot consumer electronic
The tablet PC is gaining market momentum. One need only look at the millions of sales of iPads and Galaxy Tab tablet computers since they were each launched in 2010 to know that this device is rapidly becoming popular among consumers.
According to Accenture’s research, 8 percent of consumers surveyed now own a tablet PC and about one-third of those individuals (3 percent total) purchased their tablet PC in 2010 (Figure 21). Eight percent of respondents globally plan to purchase a tablet PC in 2011—a purchase rate that would double tablet PC ownership globally in just one year.
BRIC market consumers are more enthusiastic purchasers of tablet PCs than are mature-market consumers. More than double the percentage of BRIC consumers currently own one, and double the consumers plan to buy one in 2011, than consumers in mature markets. But what is most astounding about tablet PC consumption is that nearly one-quarter of Chinese respondents (across ages within urban areas) currently own one. That is nearly three times the global average. The purchase rate in China was more than double the global average in 2010. And looking forward, China is potentially the strongest market for tablet PCs this year, with 18 percent of Chinese respondents planning to purchase one in 2011. If one does the math, tablet PC ownership would reach almost 40 percent of the urban adult population of China by 2012.
Although far behind China in consumption, India has the second-highest penetration of tablet PCs globally, with 10 percent of consumers owning one. Future growth for tablet PCs in India also looks strong: 10 percent of Indian respondents plan to purchase a tablet PC in 2011. Interestingly, Indian consumers seem less committed to the new technology than other countries. Five percent of those owning a tablet PC quit using it last year because they had the same functionality in another device (globally, the defection rate for tablet PCs was 2 percent).
Next-generation cloud client experiences based on the Metro design language
There is a whole series of evidences that Microsoft is going to introduce a unified cloud client experience in its upcoming personal cloud based layered software for its cloud client devices. The latest evidence from last week (see below) is even indicating that the same style of design might be introduced in the latest redesign of the company’s web pages. This is even more intriguing as it is indicating a direction when everything on the next-generation web, i.e. the cloud could be based on the same design language.
The new system software layer in question might come, however, as late as by the final version of Internet Explorer 9, i.e. this April at the latest. Nevertheless it is worth to examine these evidences since they might also point to the way how Microsoft is planning to address the growing issue of the coverage of its own upcoming tablet PC offerings with much more effective touch based user interface as well as the same for the growing number of 3d party devices from Apple and from partners of Google which Microsoft cannot otherwise integrate into its crucial, three screens and a cloud strategy.
The latest addition: Metro styled new entertainment experience on Xbox 360 [June 6, 2011]
The Tablet PC (Windows Slate) evidence
First, take a look at the Entertaining meets enterprising with the most powerful tablet [Jan 4, 2011] promo page in the US for the ASUS Eee Slate EP121 launched on CES 2011 (also click here for the complete coverage of CES 2011 from Microsoft point of view). What you see there is the user interface of the Windows Media Center which is coming with the Windows 7 Home Premium version installed on every Eee Slate EP121:
And this user interface is just the source of allmost all new interface designs introduced by Microsoft in the last couple of years as well explained in the wikipedia entry about the so called Metro Design Language (emphasis is mine):
The first roots of Metro’s heritage were planted in Windows Media Center for Windows XP Media Center Edition, which favored text as the primary form of navigation. This interface carried over into later iterations of Media Center. In 2006, Microsoft’s R&D department wanted to refresh the Zune interface for its second wave of devices. Microsoft executive Robbie Bach decided to redesign the interface and with more focus on clean typography and less on UI chrome. The Zune Desktop Client was also redesigned with an emphasis on typography and clean design that was different from the Zune’s previous Portable Media Center based UI; this new design eventually became known as “Metro” during Windows Phone 7’s development. Microsoft has also begun integrating elements of the Metro design language into its other products, with direct influence being seen in newer versions of Windows Live Messenger and Live Mesh.
Paul Thurrott has even a kind of historical reporting about Metro on his SuperSite For Windows which he is referring to in his recent More work on Chapter 4 and notes about the origins of Metro [April 4, 2010] as (emphasis is mine):
I spent an hour or two this morning on Chapter 4 [for his upcoming Windows Phone 7 Secrets book made later available from Wiley on Nov 9, 2010]. Most of what I’ve written so far is background material, by necessity, and I have been thinking a bit about the origins of Metro, which dates back to Freestyle [Sept 3, 2002] /Media Center [Oct 9, 2002], Portable Media Center [Sept 2, 2004], Origami [Nov 4, 2007]/UMPC [Nov 4, 2007], and of course Zune [Nov 13, 2006]/Zune HD [Sept 26, 2009]. (Some of those links are like a history lesson.)
This is an interesting thing about Metro: It’s brand new, sort of. And will be “new” to lots of people. But it’s really something that’s been in the works for over a decade, and as Microsoft veered from its original Freestyle plans (provide a 10-foot UI for Windows), it stumbled onto something wonderful: This stuff isn’t about the remote control, as originally envisioned. It’s really about alternative (non-mouse, non-keyboard) interactions. And that has evolved over time to include pen/stylus, touch, and then multi-touch. And Microsoft has suggested that further enhancements along the lines of its Natal/natural user interface work is on the way. (As is the expansion of Metro to non-phone systems.)
The Microsoft Surface evidence
No wonder that Microsoft’s only new product for CES 2011, Microsoft Surface 2.0 is now starting to support the Metro Design Language. See the following reports:
Hands-on with the new Surface 2.0 – Samsung SUR40 [Jan 8, 2011] (emphasis is mine):
The OS software has also been drastically improved. Blurry-looking graphics has been replaced with high-fidelity counterparts to compliment the higher resolution screen. For Metro fans, there’s also a splash of solid colored blocks and focus on text in the UI controls and bundled Microsoft applications.
Bing and Social Stream for Microsoft Surface v2 [Jan 14, 2011] from Josh Santangelo, technical director of Stimulant doing Surface subcontract (and lately HTML5 subcontract) work for Microsoft (emphasis is mine):
At CES, Microsoft announced the second version of the Microsoft Surface product. Part of their demos included two apps that I’ve been working on.
The first is Social Stream (née Live Stream [see Microsoft Surface Live Stream [Sept, 2010]), which has been reworked for the HD display of the v2 hardware.
The second is a Bing application. Currently you’re able to use their image search API to bring up images of pretty much anything. By the time it launches you’ll be able to do… other cool things. This is mostly what I’m working on lately.
Surface v2 and these applications will launch this summer. Learn more at surface.com.
It is also important to add that the version preceding Social Stream, what was called Live Stream has been made available back in July 2010 in source code form. See Microsoft® Surface® Live Stream Code Sample [July 29, 2010]. It is worth to read the main page since there you can find very good illustrations of the user experience. This is also the only code sample which represents Microsoft’s next generation cloud client experience as noted by Three new Microsoft Surface Code Samples [Oct 4, 2010] (emphasis is mine):
Live Stream demonstrates an elegant, simplified, interface designed for touch from the ground up, and based on the Metro design language. It is a great reference for those interested in advanced touch application design.
The benefit of this code sample is well described Josh Santangelo in his Photo [Sept 9, 2010] post as:
The last project I worked on at Stimulant for the Surface team at Microsoft was
Live Stream, a multi-user social media reader. An administrator can configure it to pull specific feeds from Twitter, Flickr, and RSS services, which are then displayed in a never-ending, scrollable stream across the display.Multiple users can pull interesting content toward them, where it will scale and orient to them for easy reading. They can take the content with them by flipping the items over and taking a photo of the Microsoft Tag on the back with their mobile phone, which resolves to the URL of that item.
This project was the inspiration for the SurfaceScrollViewer behaviors, ManipulationViewport, flipping ScatterViewItems, and Plane. Each of these components are free for download from the preceding links, and the entire project’s source code is available on the
MSDN code gallery.
And now look at a comprehensive presentation video of the whole Surface 2.0 experience as demonstrated by Chip Wood, senior director of the Surface team (responsible for the business development) shown to Rob Wolf from the Social Media team:
Bing image search you can see from 4:00 but there are Metro style things all around, see for example the kind of main menu shown from 1:40.
More information is also available in a couple of excellent articles (with embedded videos) on the overall experiences (most of them are with Chip Wood interviews/demonstrations again):
What’s Next for Microsoft Surface [Jan 6, 2011] (emphasis is mine)
You can find out a ton more on the new Surface website but I’ll give you my experience as I got ten quiet minutes to play with it this morning. One of the apps on the device was a Bing search app so I tapped in my name and back came a bunch of photos of me and all the other Steve Clayton’s on the web. As you’d expected, I could move the images, pinch, stretch and al that goodness. That’s what you’d expect – but here is the thing that sets Surface apart – my pal Somanna could use the screen a the same time and was busy performing another search. Yep, Surface 2.0 can take over 50 simultaneous inputs so we could both use the screen at the same time. In retail and entertainment environments this is killer.
Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface hands-on with video! (update) [Jan 7, 2011] which is quite extensively showing the Bing application from 1:50 of the embedded video in the end of the article
Hands on with Microsoft’s Surface 2 [Jan 8, 2011]
Up close with Microsoft’s next-generation Surface touchscreen tables (video) [Jan 9, 2011]
To close the Surface user experience here is a less than 2 minutes video record of the TouchTones freeware application by Stimulant which is very well pointing to the extent of the possibilities (a trial version is also available for Windows Phone 7):
TouchTones lets up to four people create music collaboratively on Microsoft Surface. You don’t need to know anything about music to make something that sounds beautiful. Start an instrument playing by touching a colored spinner, change the arrow directions on the grid to change the melody, and that’s about it! TouchTones provides an immediate and enjoyable musical experience for any small group. TouchTones can be learned with only a few seconds of exploration or by viewing its integrated help video. From there, additional features emerge through play. Create tricky melody paths through the note grid, or use multiple fingers and play TouchTones like a keyboard. Tested with users from age 4 to age 60, TouchTones opens up either minutes or hours of enjoyment, for as few as one user or even a whole family. Touchtones is a collaborative, multi-touch, multi-user, grid-based music sequencer that is being released as freeware for Microsoft Surface. It has four instruments distributed across four octaves, all playing to a master tempo. Sounds can be triggered by user- controlled animated “sprites” or by simply pressing a colored button and pressing one of the icons on the grid at the same time. The patterns on the grid produce melody, and anyone can alter the melody, even while it’s playing. Volume and reset controls help to round out the simple and wholly visual user interface. While TouchTones comes with a clean, modern design and a set of pleasant sounds, it has been designed to be reskinnable. Both the sounds and visuals can be completely customized to match any brand, mood, or theme.
by
Darren David , Stimulant
Lee Granas , Stimulant
Jules Konig , Stimulant
Nathan Moody , Stimulant
Joshua Santangelo , Stimulant
And this is leading to the very broad area of possibilities under the umbrella of Natural User Interfaces:
Natural user interfaces, or NUIs, are perfect for multi-touch and gestural interaction. How are they actually created? What hardware is available to support such interactions? How are they different from graphical user interfaces, or GUIs? Stimulant is one of the world’s few interaction design and development agencies whose mission is focused on creating such experiences. From custom hardware to Microsoft Surface, Stimulant will talk about their process, deliverables, experiences, successes, and failures from working towards a more natural way to interact with computers and other devices.
Darren David and Nathan Moody are the founding principles of Stimulant, a San Francisco based boutique agency that conceives, designs, and develops digital experiences that inspire wonder for places, contexts, and devices where none usually exists. From multi-touch to mobile, from the biggest custom touchwalls to the smallest consumer devices, they focus on making beauty bulletproof and machines magical. Their most recent clients have included HP, McKesson, Microsoft, and General Motors.
The Microsoft homepage preview evidence
Even Microsoft’s home page is being now redesigned using this same style as Dan Grady, West Coast Premier Field Engineering (PFE) Director at Microsoft reported on his http://twitter.com/snosnap [Jan 18, 2010] that:
microsoft.com launches preview of new look today: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/preview/ 5:51 PM Jan 18th via Seesmic Web
Just 40 minutes later the news appeared already on the winrumors site as Microsoft previews new Metro UI homepage design [Jan 18, 6:30 pm, 2011] (emphasis is mine)
Microsoft’s new front page is clearly inspired by the company’s Metro UI design. Windows Phone 7 and Zune both use the Metro UI and the software giant is hedging its bets that users will appreciate the slick look on the web.
Microsoft’s new homepage also features Internet Explorer 9 integration. The new site features jump lists and pinning support, both new features of Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft has also included its new tagline, “Be what’s next”, on the website. Microsoft revealed the new motto at the company’s employee only Global Exchange (MGX) event last year in Atlanta. The new tagline was officially shown in a video which emphasised a new flexibility between the various brands of Microsoft. The tagline replaces Microsoft’s aging “your potential, our passion” tagline which has been used in recent years.
It’s not yet clear when the software giant plans to switch to the newly designed site. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to WinRumors that the company doesn’t have a specific date for the switchover:
“We will continue to collect feedback during the preview period and that will help determine the final release date. We want to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our customers and reviewing and considering all feedback received.”
(See also the Evolution of Microsoft.com [Dec 21, 2010] for comparison).
Somewhat later and by another root Michael Gillett, a student and an ardent “Microsoft follower & tech blogger + enthusiast” got a similar kind of message from another Microsoftie (Larry Hryb from the Xbox team, alias majornelson) which he not only retweeted but also decided (after looking into the new design for just a minute) that it is a Metro style design which he tweeted immediately:
majornelson Microsoft.com is being redesigned. Get a preview here: http://mjr.mn/dFdhZ3 6:58 PM Jan 18th via TweetDeck from Studio A, East Seattle Retweeted by MichaelGillett and 100+ others
Micorosft.com is going Metro! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/preview/default.aspx 7:00 PM Jan 18th via web
Since Michael Gillett is also reporting for Neowin on Microsoft related news this could well be the cause of Neowin’s news editor Andrew Lyle releasing two hours later a detailed news item that Microsoft shows off newly redesigned homepage [Jan 18, 2011] which:
features a Windows Phone 7 style Metro UI
The Windows Phone 7 evidence
So how the Windows Phone 7 style Metro UI is looking like? The following very practical videos from the Australian APC Magazine are giving the easiest way of understanding that:
Windows Phone 7 – User Interface and Basics [Oct 12, 2010]
wp games [Oct 12, 2010]
Windows Phone 7 – Aussie third party apps [Oct 12, 2010]
The Microsoft MSDN news article Build Beautiful Apps and Games [Oct 11, 2010] is describing this as (emphasis is mine):
The Windows Phone OS 7 User Interface (UI) is based on a design that is internally named Metro, and echoes the visual language of airport and metro system signage in its design and typeface. The goal is to create contextual relevance through content – the user’s own content – so that using the phone is a personal experience. Metro design interfaces embody harmonious, functional, and attractive visual elements that encourage playful exploration so that the user feels a sense of wonder and excitement. A clear, straightforward design not only makes an application legible, it also encourages usage and can lead to delight.
The Metro design was developed using the five following principles:
1) Clean, light, open, and fast: It is visually distinctive, contains ample white space, reduces clutter and elevates typography as a key design element.
2) Content, not chrome: It accentuates focus on the content that the user cares most about, making the product simple and approachable for everyone.
3) Integrated hardware and software: Hardware and software blend into each other and creates a seamless user experience from single-button access to Search, Start, Back and the camera to on-board sensor integration.
4) World-class motion: The Windows Phone 7 touch and gesture experiences on capacitive screens are consistent with Windows 7 on the desktop and include hardware-accelerated animations and transitions to enhance the user’s experience at every turn.
5) Soulful and alive: A personalized, automatically updated view into the information that matters most to the user is enabled and brings to life a cinematic photo and video experience by having a fully integrated Zune media player experience.These design principles are based around the concept that UI elements should be authentically digital and embody harmonious, functional, and attractive visual elements. Applications should engage users by promoting navigation, exploration, and exciting visuals in their design.
Read the UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7 to learn more.
There are a couple of other videos which are highly recommended:
Windows Phone 7 Promotional Video [HD] [Oct 1, 2010]
Windows Phone 7 Features [Oct 11, 2010]
Windows Phone Design Days – Metro [Aug 13, 2010] where Jeff Fong, the Design lead for Windows Phone kicks-off Windows Phone Design Days with his overview of Metro. This video is part of the Windows Phone Design Days Series.
Metro Design Language of Windows Phone 7 [Dec 3, 2010] which is the first tutorial in the Microsoft’s Design Toolbox for Windows Phone 7. In this tutorial you can find three videos about the:
– Guiding Principles of the Design Language
– Unique Components of the Interface
– Signature Examples of Motion
You can also read a very recent article Metro, Windows Phone 7 design language [Jan 5, 2011] by Andrew Spooner who is “Creative Technologist” in the Developer Evangelism team of Microsoft UK.
Changing purchasing attitudes for consumer computing are leading to a new ICT paradigm
Moving from 2010 into 2011 there is a fundamental shift towards the new ICT paradigm of cloud computing. We have device manufacturers’ forecasts showing that for the first time the cloud client devices, indeed the smartphones alone, will be shipped in a number exceeding the number of personal computers (see Part I. of the below article). Consumer research published recently has also shown that for the first time the attitude of the customers turned to mobile devices from the destops in the US (see Part II. below). A comprehensive research study just published is providing an even more general picture by covering all possible consumer devices and all the largest geographies (see Part III. below). Its conclusion is even more radical:
“The research findings raise the question as to whether, in the long run, desktop and laptop PCs in the home will be increasingly replaced by a group of newer technology alternatives such as tablet computers, netbooks, smartphones and e-book readers. ,” said Kumu Puri, senior executive with Accenture’s Electronics & High-Tech Practice. “If strength is measured by unit sales, the computer will remain the strong consumer technology giant for many years. Our research found that 93 percent of survey respondents own a computer—a higher proportion than any of the 19 technologies included in the survey. But if measured by growth rate, the PC market–at least for consumers–has reached a level of saturation and will continue to see diminished growth rates. There’s increasing potential for an end in sight for the relevance of the personal computer in the home as we know it today.”
Worth to read along with this: Gartner: media tablets are the new segment next to mobile PCs and desktops, as well as web- and app-capable mobile phones [April 16, 2011]
Part I. Cloud client devices are surpassing personal computers in 2011
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are fast changing from a computer-centered era of the past 60+ years into a new one based on an ICT cloud where the resources shared by everybody are behind the so called cloud covering smaller or bigger data centers, different hosting centers, or even servers in your closet connected to the Internet. All fueled by 3.5G/3.9G, SoC & reflectivity. See the links on the right sidebar:
Consequently our clients are fast changing as well. You no longer need a fully equipped PC or notebook to serve your personal computing needs. As small device as the contemporary smartphone is sufficient to feel yourself empowered by the ICT cloud. We even had media tablets in 2010, like the pioneering Apple iPad, which are serving your cloud content consumption needs. And then all those classic devices, the PC, the notebook, the netbook etc., that you were accustomed to in the recent pre-cloud era, have just started to be transformed into something else to fit cloud authoring and consumption as well. Dell Inspiron Duo and Toshiba Libretto are good examples of that from 2010.
Now look at the client device numbers to get a feeling of the upcoming fundamental changes:
– It’s Official: 2010 the Biggest Year in Xbox History [Jan 13, 2011] (emphasis is mine)
December Xbox 360 console sales remained strong, with 1.9 million units sold, our biggest month ever in the history of Xbox 360.
…
Last week at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft ended the year with 50 million Xbox 360 consoles sold worldwide since launch [unveiled on May 12, 2005], 30 million active Xbox LIVE members and 8 million Kinect sensors sold in just the first 60 days on the market.
– One on One: Ballmer says Xbox, Kinect are key products [Jan 17, 2011] (emphasis is mine)
Q: You sold 8 million Kinects over the holidays, more than you expected. What differentiates it from other gaming consoles on the market?
A: Xbox isn’t a gaming console. Xbox is a family entertainment center. It’s a place to socialize. It’s a place to watch TV. We have Hulu coming. It’s the only system where you are the controller. Your voice, your gestures, your body.
– E-Ink Holding’s forecast for e-readers: 10 million in 2010 — 20-25 million in 2011
– Amazon Kindle devices shipped: 2.4 million in 2009, 8 million in 2010 (1.6 million in December 2010 alone, nearing rival iPad shipments in that month)
– Global e-book readers by Digitimes Research (in millions):
|
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
2013 |
|
11.4 |
18.21 |
24.31 |
29.03 |
– Gartner forecast for media tablets (in thousands):
|
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
2013 |
|
19,490 |
54,781 |
103,425 |
154,150 |
– Digitimes Research representing the forecasts of the device manufacturers (in millions):
|
Year |
Smartphones |
Tablet PCs |
Notebooks |
|
2011 |
|
44 iPad (15 in 2010) 20-30 non-iPad ; |
|
|
2013 |
800 |
100 |
300 |
And here is a graph of the above smartphone trends to make things even more visible:
![Smartphones [to be] manufactured in 2010 and 2011](https://lazure2.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/smartphonestobemanufacturedin2010and2011.jpg "Smartphones [to be] manufactured in 2010 and 2011")
Update regarding the changing TV market:
– Global LCD TV Market to Grow 31% in 2010, Slowing to 13% in 2011 [DisplaySearch press release, Jan 3, 2011]
According to the latest DisplaySearch Quarterly Advanced Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report, total TV shipments in 2010 will reach more than 247 million units, a staggering 17% increase from 2009 and the best growth seen since the start of the flat panel TV transition.
…
LCD continues to dominate TV shipments worldwide, accounting for at least half of all TV shipments in all regions except Asia Pacific. … LCD TV shipments will rise from 190 million in 2010 to 215 million in 2011, although an increase in the rate of ASP erosion will lead to the first ever revenue decline in the LCD TV category. Japan has been a spotlight market for LCD TV growth in 2010, with LCD TV shipments forecast at 22.6 million units, an increase of 80% from 2009 due to the Eco-Points stimulus program. That program will end in 2011, so shipments are expected to fall sharply. European shipments have been fairly robust in 2010, but growth will fall from double- to single-digit rates over the next few years. Also a first in 2011, emerging regions will overtake the developed regions (Japan, North America, and Western Europe) in total LCD TV unit volume as the growth focus shifts to countries with lower flat panel TV penetration.
…
Figure 1: Worldwide TV Market by Technology
Source: DisplaySearch Quarterly Advanced Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report
– Connected TVs Forecast to Account for 21% of Global TV Shipments in 2010 [DisplaySearch press release, Dec 30, 2010]
While the consumer electronics industry prepares its wares for the CES in Las Vegas, the foundations of a quiet revolution in TV viewing continue to be built, with 21% of all TVs shipped in 2010 [52 million] forecast to have internet connectivity. According to the DisplaySearch Q4’10 Quarterly TV Design and Features Report, the category is forecast to grow to over 122 million in 2014.Growth of connected TVs was fueled by the Japanese market in 2010 with strong market growth driven by the Eco Points system, and very high penetration of connected TVs, driven by domestic brands’ strategies and by high levels of broadband access. Emerging markets will play a key role in the future growth of this segment, with Eastern Europe forecast to grow from 2.5 million connected TVs shipped in 2010 to over 10 million in 2014. DisplaySearch findings also suggest that 12% of flat panel TVs sold in China in 2010 will have internet capability.
Figure 1: Connected TV Shipment Forecast
Source: DisplaySearch Quarterly TV Design and Features Report
“The looming risk now is what happens if every connected TV gets used,” said Paul Gray, Director of European TV Research. “With Netflix accounting for 20% of peak internet traffic in the US, it’s reasonable to ask if the infrastructure can cope. Set makers need to understand that broadband access does not scale endlessly like broadcast reception.”
It is expected that the connected TV market will diverge, with basic sets carrying enhanced broadcast services such as Hbb.TV and YouView, while the Smart TV segment will enjoy configurable applications, sophisticated search and navigation engines, and advanced user interfaces.
While there is no accepted definition for Smart TV, most have a few key features:
- Capable of upgrades and changes to functionality by the consumer, typically by loading applications
- Able to receive content from the open internet, not just within a “walled garden” defined by a portal
- Possesses an advanced user interface or content discovery engine, to permit rapid discovery and selection of content to watch (but not via a browser and typed search terms as in PCs)
- Able to communicate with other networked devices in the home via open standards (e.g. DLNA)
Smart TVs are not limited to a specific operating system, and Linux (MeeGo) and Android (Google TV) platforms will be joined by others. Google is working with Sony and Logitech for the launch of Google TV, but expect many more entrants in 2011.
“Current shipment levels combined with consumer feedback suggests that Google TV is not yet the Smart TV of people’s dreams,” Gray added. “While adding internet capabilities into the TV is powerful, it needs to be as effortless as channel surfing. However, Google TV has given a good lead into what works.”
– 3D TV Forecast to Reach 3.2 Million Global Shipments in 2010 and 91 Million in 2014 [DisplaySearch press release, Jan 4, 2011]
The availability of 3D content will remain the greatest determinant of the value of 3D TVs to consumers – and as a result its achievable premium in TV sets. 3D TVs were launched with much fanfare at IFA 2009, but a year ago at CES, the first real products reached the market. Since then, shipments have made steady, although slightly disappointing, progress. Global shipments in 2010 were expected to total 3.2 million worldwide, according to the DisplaySearch Quarterly TV Design and Features Report.“TV manufacturers really got ahead of themselves in 2010, and they forgot that a TV is a tool to watch content,” said Paul Gray, Director of TV Electronics Research at DisplaySearch. “People will only buy a 3D TV if there is enough content to watch, and in 2010, there simply was not enough 3D content available. As a result, only 4% of TVs 40” and larger had 3D capabilities.”
Despite this, competitive pressures in the industry are rapidly making 3D a compulsory feature. DisplaySearch forecasts that nearly18 million 3D sets will be shipped in 2011, rising to over 91 million in 2014.
“TV set makers are strongly committed to 3D, and they expect their strong lead to encourage content creators to follow,” Gray added. “Weakness in the North American TV market was largely to blame for slow 3D shipments, although our research shows that only 40 3D Blu-ray disc titles were available across all genres at the end of 2010.”
Figure 1: Forecast 3D TV Unit Shipments (000’s) by Region
Source: DisplaySearch Q4’10 Quarterly TV Design and Features Report
The DisplaySearch Quarterly TV Design and Features Report also examines systems with 3D passive glasses, which launched in China in December 2010 and are expected to be featured at CES. These are being offered as an alternative to the existing shutter glasses types, which have significant drawbacks, including high costs, weight, the need for re-charging, and limited interoperability.
“What is disturbing, though, is the prospect of a format war,” said Gray. “It would be very damaging and consumers would opt to wait if they sense obsolescence, especially when they are already cautious about spending.”
Part II. Mobile PCs to gain over desktops in US
US Consumers More than Twice as Likely to Buy Portable Computers as Desktops in the Next Six Months [Dec 28, 2010]. A survey conducted in August 2010 by ABI Research revealed that (emphasis is mine):
… while desktops are the most common type of computer in consumers` homes, consumers are more than twice as likely (35%) to buy laptops (notebook PCs), netbooks, or media tablets than desktops in the next six months.
… the survey shows changing attitudes across all classes of computing devices.
…
Price remains the most important criterion for laptops because most new laptops purchased at retail will perform most functions that a typical user wants so price is seen as critical.
But for desktops, which are often priced lower (per spec) than laptops, respondents picked processor speed, memory, and storage capacity above price. Consumers perceive these computers as offering processing power and plenty of storage, perhaps acting as the central hub for a digital library.
Primary research director Janet Wise added, “In netbooks, much media attention has been devoted to the processors because this often has an impact on users’ experience. So the majority of consumers cite processor speed as a netbook`s most important feature. . As well as a definite shift to laptops, there is greater overlap between netbook and laptop segments.”
Cost figures even further down the list of important criteria for media tablets, outranked by processor speed, screen resolution, memory, screen size, storage and operating system.
ABI Research’s “Consumer Technology Barometer: Home Computing (Q3 2010)” is a primary research-based tracking study that provides insight into the US consumers’ attitudes, awareness, usage patterns, purchase intentions and purchasing criteria for desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and netbooks.
Part III. Newer consumer technologies are gaining over personal computers and basic mobile phones
The report
Finding Growth: The Emergence of a New Consumer Computing Paradigm [Jan 3, 2011]
The 2011 Accenture Consumer Electronics Products and Services Usage Report (emphasis is mine):
For four consecutive years Accenture’s Electronics & High Tech industry practice has conducted research to identify and track preferences for consumer technologies and services. The research is intended to help consumer technology executives better understand the purchase and use of consumer technologies among key generations and to gain deeper insights into global differences.
For the 2011 research Accenture conducted a quantitative online consumer study comprising 8,002 interviews across eight countries: U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, Russia, India and China.
The research, fielded in October and November, 2010, sought to cover a demographically representative sample across all the geographies. New to this year’s research is Accenture’s 2010 Consumer Technology Power Rankings, which ranks the year’s most pervasive consumer technologies and their projected rate of growth. The rankings bring particular insights into consumer’s intentions relative to the newest and fastest growing technologies. One of the fascinating rankings reveals that while the growth rate of personal computers is expected to decline, the growth rate of tablet PCs is expected to increase by 160 percent.
Read the Full Report: Finding Growth: Emergence of a New Consumer Technology Paradigm [dowwloadable free of charge]
To illustrate the outstanding value of this 44-page free report here is the table of contents and the list of figures in a combined form:
The press release
Consumers’ Purchases of Computers and Mobile Phones Will Decline While Purchases of Newer Consumer Technologies Will Soar, New Accenture Survey Finds [Jan 4, 2011]. (Emphasis is mine):
A new Accenture (NYSE: ACN) survey predicts that consumer purchase rates for personal computers and mobile phones (excluding smartphones) will decline by 39 percent and 56 percent this year compared with last year, respectively. By contrast, buying rates of 3DTVs (three-dimensional TVs) are expected to rise 500 percent; tablet computers 160 percent; ebook readers 133 percent; and smartphones 26 percent.
The annual survey focused on usage and spending on 19 different consumer electronics technologies among more than 8,000 consumers in eight countries in both emerging markets and developed economies: Brazil, China, India, Russia, France, Germany, Japan and the United States. Survey respondents in emerging countries represent key urban markets rather than the population as a whole.
The survey found that only 17 percent of survey respondents plan to buy a desktop or laptop computer in 2011– a 39 percent drop from 2010. Tracking with this trend, the survey revealed that 75 percent of U.S. survey respondents emailed each week from their PCs in 2010, down from 80 percent the year before. The research also showed that respondents are using multiple devices such as tablet PCs for activities that used to be done on traditional PCs. For example, on at least a weekly basis, 40 percent of the respondents email from a tablet PC. In addition to checking email, respondents are using tablet PCs for browsing the web, watching videos and reading books, newspapers and magazines.
“The research findings raise the question as to whether, in the long run, desktop and laptop PCs in the home will be increasingly replaced by a group of newer technology alternatives such as tablet computers, netbooks, smartphones and e-book readers,” said Kumu Puri, senior executive with Accenture’s Electronics & High-Tech Practice. “If strength is measured by unit sales, the computer will remain the strong consumer technology giant for many years. Our research found that 93 percent of survey respondents own a computer—a higher proportion than any of the 19 technologies included in the survey. But if measured by growth rate, the PC market–at least for consumers–has reached a level of saturation and will continue to see diminished growth rates. There’s increasing potential for an end in sight for the relevance of the personal computer in the home as we know it today.”
The research also found that ownership of basic mobile phones dropped from 79 percent in 2009 to 65 percent in 2010. In the same period, ownership of smartphones quadrupled from eight percent to 32 percent. In the survey, mobile phones were described as having basic voice capability but not the enhanced features available on smartphones, such as surfing the Internet.
3D TVs
Unlike purchases of PCs and mobile phones, purchase rates of 3D TVs are expected to grow this year at the fastest rate–500 percent—of all 19 technologies included in the survey. As consumer electronics companies consider ways to increase demand for 3D TVs, price emerged as the biggest lever for driving greater interest in this new technology product. According to the survey, 57 percent of respondents said they would be more inclined to buy a 3D TV if the price were within their budget. Finding this price point was more significant among respondents under 24 years old (64 percent) than respondents who were older (50 percent). Other factors respondents said would make them more inclined to buy a 3D TV included having greater availability of 3D content and not having to wear 3D glasses.
China
Among respondents in all eight countries surveyed, Chinese consumers were among the most enthusiastic purchasers and users of the latest consumer technologies. While two percent to three percent of respondents in most countries own a 3D TV, twice that many Chinese respondents say they own one. Sixty-nine percent of the nation’s respondents want or plan to own a 3D TV, compared with only one-fourth of U.S. consumers and one-fifth of Japanese consumers.
Chinese respondents are big users of smartphones, the survey revealed. More than half (53 percent) of Chinese respondents currently own a smartphone versus one-third of U.S. respondents. Furthermore, smartphones are predicted to be the most purchased device in China next year, with 38 percent of those surveyed planning to buy one.
For a copy of the complete set of survey findings, please visit www.accenture.com/ConsumerTech2011.
Methodology
The survey, conducted in October and November of 2010, sought to cover a demographically representative sample across all geographies. The annual research began as a U.S. study in 2008 and grew to a global study in 2010. For the 2011 report Accenture conducted a quantitative online consumer study consisting of surveys of 8,002 consumers in eight countries: Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and the United States. In Brazil, China, India and Russia the sample is representative of urban and semi-urban populations. Survey respondents were asked about the following 19 technologies: computers, mobile phones, digital photo cameras, DVD players, regular TV, high definition TV, portable music players, game consoles, VCRs, smartphones, GPS, digital video cameras, portable gaming devices, digital video recorders, netbooks, BluRay players, tablet computers, ebook readers, and 3D TVs. To calculate the change in annual purchasing rates, Accenture first subtracted the percentage who purchased in 2010 from the percent who intend to buy in 2011. That total was divided by the percentage who purchased in 2010.
Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and 3.0 (Honeycomb)
All the speculations collected in my Beyond Android 2.1 [July 4] and Android 2.2 (Froyo) excitement is just the tip of the iceberg for the current Android momentum [July 9 – Sept 10] are now over as Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) was released on Dec 6. with the lead device (Samsung Nexus S) availability on Dec 16, as well as Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) shown by Andy Rubin on Dec 6. and the lead device rumored to be Motorola’s XOOM with as early availability as February 2011.
Follow-Up (Aug 2, 2011):
– Acer & Asus: Compensating lower PC sales by tablet PC push [March 29, 2011 with comprehensive update on Aug 2, 2011] which is showing serious technical and market problems with the original version of Honeycomb
– Tackling the Android tide [July 16, 2011]
Worth to read along with this: Gartner: media tablets are the new segment next to mobile PCs and desktops, as well as web- and app-capable mobile phones [April 16, 2011]
Updates (Feb 4):
Motorola to sell Xoom tablet PC as early as February [Jan 31, 2011]:
Motorola is set to sell its 10.1-inch Android 3.0 tablet PC Xoom as early as February 2011 with the rest of its competitors to start launching their Android 3.0 models after March.
As Google is sending invitations to global media announcing the release date of Android 3.0, iPad-like products are expected to start showing up lead by Motorola.
Since the rest of the PC and smartphone vendors will still take a while to adjust their related settings to allow their machines to run Android 3.0 after it releases, Motorola is expected to have about a month head-start to fully push its Xoom sales.
High Tech Computer (HTC), RIM, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics may need to wait until after March to release their tablet PCs, while PC players such as Acer, Asustek Computer, and Toshiba may even delay to after April or May. To maintain their market position, some vendors plan to launch a small volume of Android 2.3-based models, while some will launch Wintel-based models.
Updates (Jan 10):
Verizon Wireless and Motorola Mobility Announce Motorola XOOM™ Tablet on Nation’s Largest and Most Reliable 3G Network [Jan 5, 2011] (emphasis is mine):
Verizon Wireless and Motorola Mobility, Inc. (NYSE: MMI), today unveiled the innovative new tablet Motorola XOOM™ − the first device on Google’s new Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system designed from the ground up for tablets. The Honeycomb user experience improves on Android favorites such as widgets, multi-tasking, browsing, notifications and customization and features the latest Google Mobile innovations. Boasting a dual core processor with each core running at 1 GHz, delivering up to two GHz of processing power, and 10.1-inch widescreen HD display, Motorola XOOM gives Verizon Wireless customers a new type of mobile computing experience on a stylishly thin device that is 4G LTE upgradeable.Motorola XOOM redefines the tablet device category by providing more ways to have fun, connect with friends and stay productive on the go. It allows consumers to experience HD content right on the device, supports 1080p HD video and HDMI output to display content on larger HD screens, and plays video and other rich web content seamlessly with Adobe® Flash® Player. Motorola XOOM features a front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video chats over Wi-Fi or 3G/4G LTE, as well as a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera that captures video in 720p HD. It delivers console-like gaming performance on its 1280×800 display, and features a built-in gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, accelerometer and adaptive lighting for new types of applications. It also features Google Maps 5.0 with 3D interaction and delivers access to over 3 million Google eBooks and thousands of apps from Android Market™.
…
The Motorola XOOM device will launch as a 3G/Wi-Fi-enabled device in Q1 2011 with an upgrade to 4G LTE in Q2.
A Sneak Peek of Android 3.0, Honeycomb [Jan 5, Posted by Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering] (emphasis is mine)
… today at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, we previewed Android 3.0, Honeycomb.
Honeycomb is the next version of the Android platform, designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. We’ve spent a lot of time refining the user experience in Honeycomb, and we’ve developed a brand new, truly virtual and holographic user interface. Many of Android’s existing features will really shine on Honeycomb: refined multi-tasking, elegant notifications, access to over 100,000 apps on Android Market, home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive. We’ve also made some powerful upgrades to the web browser, including tabbed browsing, form auto-fill, syncing with your Google Chrome bookmarks, and incognito mode for private browsing.
Honeycomb also features the latest Google Mobile innovations including Google Maps 5 with 3D interactions and offline reliability, access to over 3 million Google eBooks, and Google Talk, which now allows you to video and voice chat with any other Google Talk enabled device (PC, tablet, etc).
Android Honeycomb 3.0 full-live demo! [Jan 6]
CES: Motorola Xoom wins Best of Show. Here’s why. [Jan 8] (emphasis is mine)
As the first exclusive product to feature Google’s tablet-specific Android 3.0 operating system, this award is also a big nod to Google’s work developing the Android Honeycomb operating system previewed in the video below. From what we’ve seen, the Android Honeycomb OS charts exciting new ground for tablets, bringing some dearly needed differentiation from the Android smartphone experience. As with previous versions of Android, Honeycomb will inevitably make its way onto other tablets, offering more choice for consumers and providing the industry a valuable resource. By CES 2012, Honeycomb will likely be the de facto standard for Android-based tablets.
In fact, we considered whether Honeycomb itself should be the nominee, but decided that the Xoom, as a vessel for the OS, was as worthy as its cargo. We believe the Xoom is the most potentially disruptive technology among the nominees; it’s a true competitor for the iPad and will be one of the first 4G-compatible tablets to hit the market.
Samsung Plans Dual-Core Phones, New Tablets in Feb. [Jan 7]
… the company still lacks a tablet running Android 3.0 as well as phones and tablets with dual-core processors, which we’re seeing from Motorola, LG and others.
“In February at MWC, we will unveil our next-generation tablet device portfolio in detail,” [the president of Samsung’s mobile business, JK] Shin said.
Samsung will have both 3G and 4G tablets in the future, and “we are in a position to supply 4G smartphones and tablets to all the carriers in the US,” he said.
New Windows Phone 7 devices, possibly with 4G LTE, may also be announced in February, Shin said.
“We will continue to keep the partnership with Microsoft,” he said.
Samsung’s Galaxy Android Tablet Is Going To Be Obsolete Very Soon [Jan 4]
When Google releases Android 3.0, a.k.a. “Honeycomb,” it’s going to be optimized for tablets, and it’s going to have strict hardware requirements, PC Mag reports.PC Mag spoke with Bobby Cha, managing director of Korean electronics company, Enspert. Cha says Honeycomb with require dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 chips.
In other words, it needs strong chips.
This means the current crop of Android tablets on the market, like the Galaxy Tab, won’t be able to upgrade their software to Android 3.0 when it’s available.
Note: Samsung Galaxy Tab Sales Pass 1 Million [Dec 3, 2010]: “In less than two months from launch”
High level Google manager dismisses rumors of minimum system specs for Android 3.0 Honeycomb [Jan 7]
T-Mobile G-Slate announced: 4G, Android 3.0, made by LG [Jan 5]
LG And T-Mobile Release Android 3.0 4G Tablet (video) [Jan 10]
Motorola expected to ship 700,000-800,000 Xoom tablet PCs in 1Q11 [Jan 10, 2011]
The sources also pointed out that Google’s Android 3.0 is most suitable for 7- to 10-inch tablet PCs and most notebook vendors were not able to receive priority support from Google. Currently, Motorola and Samsung are Google’s priority partners with LG Electronics and High Tech Computer (HTC) following behind, the sources noted.
Dell and T-Mobile USA Unveil Streak 7, Both Companies’ First 4G Tablet Offering the Ultimate Entertainment Experience [Jan 6] (emphasis is mine)
The Streak 7 features Google’s™ Android 2.2 operating system, a dual core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor and full support for Adobe® Flash® Player.
… The new Streak 7 will feature Dell’s innovative Stage user interface, which provides a seamless and unified experience for accessing all your favorite content. Later this year, Dell will add syncing to Stage so people can keep their photos, contacts, calendars and other personal content synchronized across their Dell Stage-equipped devices, from tablets to PCs, connected through their home network.
Acer’s New ICONIA Tab A500 to Support Gamers and Mobile Consumers on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Network [Jan 4]
Acer Iconia Tab A500 first hands-on! (update: video) [Jan 6]: “It’s just the same engineering prototype with an early build of Android 2.2 we’ve seen before — it’ll run Honeycomb at launch — but this time, we got to touch.“
Asus unveils three Android 3.0 tablets [Jan 5]
CES: Toshiba’s 10-inch Honeycomb tablet, hands-on [Jan 3]
Lenovo to put Google Android 3.0 on tablets [Jan 10]
Hannspree showcases three new Android tablets [Jan 10]
End of updates (Jan 10) — additional updates in the Part II.
So while Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) made the user experience issue solved for the Android smartphones, the Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) version will deliver a competitive user experience for the upcoming 2011 Android tablets. You can find the currently available information regarding all that below.
Part I. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
Introducing Nexus S with Gingerbread [Dec 6, 2010]
The very first Android phone hit the market in November 2008. Just over two years later, Android’s vision of openness has spurred the development of more than 100 different Android devices. Today, more than 200,000 Android devices are activated daily worldwide. The volume and variety of Android devices continues to surpass our wildest expectations—but we’re not slowing down.
Today, we’re pleased to introduce the latest version of the Android platform, Gingerbread, and unveil the next Android device from the Nexus line of mobile products—Nexus S. And for developers, the Gingerbread SDK/NDK is now available as well.
Nexus S is the lead device for the Gingerbread/Android 2.3 release; it’s the first Android device to ship with the new version of the Android platform. We co-developed this product with Samsung—ensuring tight integration of hardware and software to highlight the latest advancements of the Android platform. As part of the Nexus brand, Nexus S delivers what we call a “pure Google” experience: unlocked, unfiltered access to the best Google mobile services and the latest and greatest Android releases and updates.
Take a look at our backstory video for more on the vision behind this product and to understand why we think “a thousand heads are better than one”:
Nexus S is the first smartphone to feature a 4” Contour Display designed to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and along the side of your face. It also features a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, front and rear facing cameras, 16GB of internal memory, and NFC (near field communication) hardware that lets you read information from NFC tags. NFC is a fast, versatile short-range wireless technology that can be embedded in all kinds of everyday objects like movie posters, stickers and t-shirts.
Gingerbread is the fastest version of Android yet, and it delivers a number of improvements, such as user interface refinements, NFC support, a new keyboard and text selection tool, Internet (VoIP/SIP) calling, improved copy/paste functionality and gyroscope sensor support.
…
After December 16, Nexus S can be purchased (unlocked or with a T-Mobile service plan) online and in-store from all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores in the U.S. and after December 20 at Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy retailers in the U.K.
We’ll be open-sourcing Gingerbread in the coming weeks and look forward to new contributions from the Android ecosystem in the months ahead.
Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering
Android 2.3 Platform and Updated SDK Tools [Dec 6, 2010]
Today we’re announcing a new version of the Android platform — Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). It includes many new platform technologies and APIs to help developers create great apps. Some of the highlights include:
- Enhancements for game development: To improve overall responsiveness, we’ve added a new concurrent garbage collector and optimized the platform’s overall event handling. We’ve also given developers native access to more parts of the system by exposing a broad set of native APIs. From native code, applications can now access input and sensor events, EGL/OpenGL ES, OpenSL ES, and assets, as well a new framework for managing lifecycle and windows. For precise motion processing, developers can use several new sensor types, including gyroscope.Rich multimedia: To provide a great multimedia environment for games and other applications, we’ve added support for the new video formats VP8 and WebM, as well as support for AAC and AMR-wideband encoding. The platform also provides new audio effects such as reverb, equalization, headphone virtualization, and bass boost.New forms of communication: The platform now includes support for front-facing camera, SIP/VOIP, and Near Field Communications (NFC), to let developers include new capabilities in their applications.
For a complete overview of what’s new in the platform, see the Android 2.3 Platform Highlights:
-
-
-
- New User Features
- UI refinements for simplicity and speed
- Faster, more intuitive text input
- One-touch word selection and copy/paste
- Improved power management
- Control over applications
- New ways of communicating, organizing
(Internet [voice] calling, Near-field communications, Downloads management, Camera)
- New Developer Features
- New Platform Technologies
- Media Framework
- Linux Kernel
- Networking
- Dalvik runtime (concurrent garbage collector, further JIT optimizations, improved code verification, StrictMode debugging, core libraries, updates from upstream projects)
- New User Features
-
-
Alongside the new platform, we are releasing updates to the SDK Tools (r8), NDK, and ADT Plugin for Eclipse (8.0.0).
…
Quickview
- Android runs on devices that have different screen sizes and resolutions.
- The screen on which your application is displayed can affect its user interface.
- The platform handles most of the work of adapting your app to the current screen.
- You can create screen-specific resources for precise control of your UI, if needed.
- Older applications run in a compatibility mode that provides best-effort rendering on the current screen.
- It’s important to follow the best practices described in this document and test your application in all supported screens.
Android is designed to run on a variety of devices that offer a range of screen sizes and resolutions. For applications, the platform provides a consistent environment across devices and handles much of the complexity of adapting an application’s UI to the screen on which it is being displayed. At the same time, the platform exposes APIs that give application developers precise control over their application’s UI when displayed on specific screen sizes and resolutions.
This document explains the screens-support features provided by the platform and how you use them in your application. By following the practices described here, you can easily create an application that displays properly on all supported device screens and that you can deploy to any device as a single
.apk.If you have already developed and published an application for Android 1.5 or earlier, you should read this document and consider how you may need to adapt your application for proper display on new devices that offer different screens and that are running Android 1.6 or later. In most cases, only minor adjustments are needed, however you should make sure to test your application on all supported screens.
Starting in Android 2.2, the platform includes support for extra high density screens (xhdpi), and starting in Android 2.3, the platform includes support for extra large screens (xlarge). If you’ve already followed the guidance in this document to support all other screen types, you should consider providing additional support for xhdpi and xlarge screens.
In particular, if you have an existing application that you would like to make available on small screens (such as QVGA) or for which you would like to provide better support for extra large screens, please see Strategies for Legacy Applications for more information about how to do that.
New Gingerbread API: StrictMode [Dec 12, 2010]
I joined the Android team full-time just over a year ago and spent a lot of time investigating Froyo performance issues, in particular debugging ANRs (those annoying dialogs you get when an application stalls its main thread’s Looper). Debugging ANRs with the tools at hand was painful and boring. There wasn’t enough instrumentation to find the causes, especially when multiple processes were involved (doing Binder or ContentResolver operations to Services or ContentProviders in other processes). There had to be a better way to track down latency hiccups and ANRs…
…
StrictMode is a new API in Gingerbread which primarily lets you set a policy on a thread declaring what you’re not allowed to do on that thread, and what the penalty is if you violate the policy. Implementation-wise, this policy is simply a thread-local integer bitmask.
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Using the data from StrictMode we fixed hundreds of responsiveness bugs and animation glitches all across the board. We made performance optimizations in the Android core (e.g. system services and providers) so all apps on the system will benefit, as well as fixing up tons of app-specific issues (in both AOSP apps and Google apps). Even if you’re using Froyo today, the recent updates to GMail, Google Maps, and YouTube all benefited from StrictMode data collection gathered on Gingerbread devices.
…
Googlers who switched from Froyo to Gingerbread without seeing all the baby steps between were shocked at how much more responsive the system became. Our friends on the Chrome team then recently added something similar. Of course, StrictMode can’t take all the credit. The new concurrent garbage collector in Gingerbread also greatly reduces latency hiccups.
Nexus S 
Nexus S is the next generation of Nexus devices, co-developed by Google and Samsung. The latest Android platform (Gingerbread), paired with a 1 GHz Hummingbird processor and 16GB of memory, makes Nexus S one of the fastest phones on the market. It comes pre-installed with the best of Google apps and enabled with new and popular features like true multi-tasking, Wi-Fi hotspot, Internet Calling, NFC support, and full web browsing. With this device, users will also be the first to receive software upgrades and new Google mobile apps as soon as they become available. For more details, visit http://www.google.com/nexus.
TechCrunch Review: Google Nexus S [Dec 6]
Unlike the Nexus One, the phone was not built from scratch – the starting point was the Samsung Galaxy S, released earlier this year. And Google will not be selling this phone directly to consumers. They say that experiment is over, and this phone will be available initially at Best Buy in the U.S. (on T-Mobile) and Carphone Warehouse in the U.K. Google says the phone is currently expected to be available starting December 16, although pre-orders might be taken earlier.
…
The bottom line is this. If you are an iPhone user this isn’t going to make you switch. If you’re an Android user you will want this phone more than any other. If you’re currently neither, we recommend that you go with the Nexus S. It is better than the iPhone in most ways. What you lose with the slightly less impressive screen and iOS’s slightly slicker user experience you will more than make up for with the Nexus S’s ability to actually make phone calls that don’t drop and Google’s exceptional Navigation and voice input applications. The fact that the phone is unlocked and can be used abroad with other carriers is also a very big plus.
Hands On With Largest Android Phone Ever: A 42-Inch Nexus S [Dec 23, 2010, video included]
Last night, Google employees installed a giant Nexus S in the San Carlos Best Buy, sporting a 42 inch touchscreen, a working camera, and internet connectivity. Yes, unlike the giant Nexus Ones that Google produced last year, which just played a looping video of the UI, this giant Nexus S actually works. And it’s actually being powered by a real (smaller) Nexus S that’s been equipped with special video-out capabilities.
Part II. Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)
Motorola Android tablet prototype makes a cameo at D: Dive Into Mobile running Honeycomb [Dec 6, 2010]
Google’s Andy Rubin brought more than just a Nexus S in his bag of goodies tonight. On stage at D: Dive Into Mobile, the man has brought with him a prototype Android tablet from Motorola. It’s got video chat, an NVIDIA processor, a “dual core 3D processor,” and… oh yeah, it runs Honeycomb, not Gingerbread. Little else is known — Rubin immediately turned his attention to a new release of Google Maps — but we wouldn’t be surprised if we were looking at Stingray, a tablet rumored for a launch on Verizon shortly.
…
Prototype Motorola Android tablet, running a dual core Nvidia chip and Honeycomb, the next iteration of Android.
DROID XOOM will be Motorola’s Honeycomb Tablet, Won’t be 4G LTE [Dec 29, 2010]
How does the Motorola DROID XOOM sound? According to our sources, that’s exactly what we can expect Motorola’s Honeycomb tablet to be called when it’s announced next week at CES. We’ve seen the word “XOOM” through a batch of global trademarks, but we have confirmation that this will indeed be the name, it will definitely be running Honeycomb and for now, won’t be 4G LTE.
Update:
– Upstream supply chain facing challenge from strong tablet PC orders [Jan 10, 2011]
Upstream component makers, facing tablet PC players placing strong orders, expect their sales performance to benefit significantly; however they also pointed out that the orders will give them strong pressure over supply management.
In addition to Apple’s iPad, RIM’s PlayBook and Motorola’s Xoom as well as High Tech Computer’s (HTC’s) new tablet PCs are all set to appear in the channel in the first half of 2011 and the total tablet PC shipment may go even higher after notebook vendors start joining the market.
Despite many tablet PC brands are placing strong orders, their actual sales in retail channels are a concern among upstream players since these tablet PCs may not be able to see as strong demand as Apple’s iPad.
And if the demand is strong, since most of the upstream component makers already have existed orders to supply, the extra orders may also affect makers’ capacity schedule.
In addition, production yield rate and capacity allocation will also be issues that the makers will need to face.
As a result, upstream component makers are facing a dilemma since they do not dare to expand their capacity recklessly due to uncertainty about tablet PC’s future demand, but if the market takes off, they will face issues with capacity which could seriously damage clients.
– Motorola expected to ship 700,000-800,000 Xoom tablet PCs in 1Q11 [Jan 10, 2011]
Motorola, with assistance from Google, has showcased its new Android 3.0-based Xoom tablet PC and has placed orders for about 700,000-800,000 units with four color options for the first quarter of 2011, according to sources from upstream component makers. The sources expect the orders to go up as high as one million units in the quarter.
In addition to Taiwan-based notebook chassis makers such as Catcher Technology and Foxconn Technology, handset chassis makers including Taiwan Chi Cheng (CCC) and Silitech Technology are also expected to benefit from the tablet PC chassis business opportunity, the sources noted.
The sources also pointed out that Google’s Android 3.0 is most suitable for 7- to 10-inch tablet PCs and most notebook vendors were not able to receive priority support from Google. Currently, Motorola and Samsung are Google’s priority partners with LG Electronics and High Tech Computer (HTC) following behind, the sources noted.
The Xoom tablet PC adopts a 10.1-inch touch panel with a resolution of 1280 by 800, Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and has HDMI and USB ports. The device also features a 5-megapixel camera and an LED flash light.
Report, LG Bringing Android Honeycomb Optimus Pad Tablet To CES 2011 [Dec 29, 2010]
This Optimus Pad tablet from LG according to this source will run on Android Honeycomb OS. The new report meshes with a report we posted about back in November –when an LG official spilled some details to a Korean news outlet– that stated the upcoming 8.9-inch LG tablet would be powered by the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core chip.
Android Honeycomb Music Player: Full Guide (Early Leak) [Dec 30, 2010]
SO, there’s an Unofficial / Leaked version of the new Honeycomb music player from Android floating around out there, right? Well, we had quite a time getting this little APK to work once we got it, and we bet we weren’t the only ones. Therefor, we’ve whipped up for you this little guide and points post so that you might get the sweet updated music action working on your Android device with as little or no hassle as possible.
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Nokia name-checked as Android Honeycomb tablet producer [Dec 29, 2010]
A casual name-drop in a report on Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets has led to suggestions that Nokia is working with Google on an Android device. DigiTimes claims Google has been giving priority to brand-name handset manufacturers with support for the tablet-centric Honeycomb release, bypassing notebook makers in the process, but Nokia is in among the list of “smartphone players” supposedly working with the search giant.
It’s most likely an oversight by DigiTimes’ writers, but the remaining players on the list – Motorola, Samsung, LG and HTC – are all companies we’ve heard Android tablet rumors about in the past. A similar casual mention pre-holidays tipped Honeycomb for a March 2011 release; now the site is claiming some smartphone manufacturers could have slates running the platform out as early as the latter half of February next year.
Nokia Android Honeycomb tablet is latest odd OS rumor [Dec 29, 2010]
Android Honeycomb due for March 2011 release tip insiders [Dec 23, 2010]
Google has been coy on when exactly Android Honeycomb – the tablet-customized version of the open-source OS – will be launched, but Taipei sources may have scooped their announcement. According to DigiTimes, MSI is preparing to sell a Tegra 2 based tablet in April or May “after Google releases Android 3.0 in March.”
Now, DigiTimes has a patchy track record for accuracy, and we’re not sure if Honeycomb is going to be Android 2.4 or Android 3.0 – since Google is yet to confirm version numbers – but it certainly fits in with some previous rumors that suggested a broader February/March release window.
Android Honeycomb Is Indeed Version 2.4, Say Server Logs (Update) [Dec 29, 2010]
So we happened to be looking through some of our analytics logs today, and for the first time ever, we saw a very curious thing: a single device performed a single visit on Sunday and reported its operating system as Android 2.4. This would not be the first time we’d heard that Honeycomb, the confirmed codename for the post-Gingerbread version of the platform, referred to version number 2.4, and not 3.0, as has been widely expected up to this point — Android and Me first reported this possibility on December 15th, citing a developer working on third party software for “different versions of Android.”
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Update: After seeing our post, Android Police checked its own logs, which turned up 15 visits from several 2.4 devices over a six day period — and none from devices reporting themselves as 3.x.
Notebook vendors seeing R&D delays for Android 3.0 tablets [Dec 29, 2010]
… Google is currently giving priority for Android 3.0 support mainly to smartphone players such as Motorola, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, High Tech Computer (HTC) and Nokia, leaving notebook vendors facing delays in their R&D schedules.
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Sources believe Google’s strategy will cause notebook vendors to launch their tablet PCs later than smartphone players, while some players even believe that the tablet PC market will not be fully dominated by notebook vendors who will also face competition from smartphone players.
Smartphone players are expected to launch their Android 3.0 tablet PCs as early as the second half of February 2011, while notebook vendors will need to wait until the end of March to be able to have products on the market, the sources noted.
Although most of the notebook vendors are already set to launch Wintel- or Android 2.2-based models, most of their shipment volumes are still limited as the vendors are pessimistic about these models and believe Android 3.0 will be the shipments driver.
Update: Google giving priority to cooperate with Motorola, Samsung and HTC on Android 3.0 tablet PCs [Jan 7, 2011]
Google has apparently given priority to Motorola, Samsung Electronics and HTC for cooperation to develop tablet PCs that will run on Android 3.0 Honeycomb, according to industry sources.
Motorola has unveiled its Xoom tablet PC running on Android 3.0 at CES 2011, while Samsung is able to manufacture a number of key components for tablet PCs, the sources noted.
On the other hand, Taiwan-based ODM notebook makers are not strong in software development and also cannot control the supply of some key components for tablet PCs, making them unable to compete with handset makers to win support from Google, the source pointed out.
Compal Electronics reportedly tried in vain to cooperate with Google to develop tablet PCs in 2010 as Google has given priority to handset vendors, the sources added.
Handset vendors prefer notebook to handset makers for outsourcing tablet PCs, say Taiwan handset makers [Dec 29, 2010]
With handset vendors stepping into tablet PCs, priority is being given to notebook ODMs rather than handset makers for outsourced production, according to Taiwan-based handset makers.
RIM, Motorola and HTC have selected notebook ODMs Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics and Pegatron Technology, respectively, to produce their own-brand tablet PCs, the sources pointed out. Hewlett-Packard may choose Inventec to make its WebOS tablet PCs, the sources added.
Tablet PCs are actually more similar to smartphones than to notebooks in processor architecture, operating system, power consumption, user interface, communication functions and portability, the sources indicated. However, handset vendors mostly develop tablet PCs in-house and therefore care about the efficiency and cost of assembly, and in this respect notebook makers have the advantage because tablets are closer to notebooks than to smartphones in size, the sources analyzed.
Samsung, LG to enhance presence in global smartphone market in 2011, say Taiwan makers [Dec 28, 2010]
Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have gained footholds in the global market of smartphones in 2010 with Galaxy S and Optimus One respectively, and will launch many smartphone models to strengthen their market status in high-end and entry-level as well as mid-range to entry-level segments respectively, according to Taiwan-based handset makers.
Samsung and LG emphasize the importance of touch panels for smartphones and both have the advantage of in-house panel technologies and production capacities, the sources indicated. Samsung will capitalize on its Super AMOLED (active matrix OLED) technology, while LG will adopt LTPS (low-temperature poly-silicon) panels in the first half of 2011 and then AMOLED panels in the second half, the sources noted.
Focusing on high-end and entry-level segments in 2011, Samsung will launch Android smartphone models throughout the year and Windows Phone 7 (WP7) models additionally in the second half, the sources pointed out. Samsung is expected to intensify competition with Motorola and Taiwan-based HTC in high-end smartphone models, especially in North American market, the sources indicated.
LG will launch 30 smartphone models priced at US$150-400, using either Android or WP7, in 2011, bringing significant competitive pressure on China-based vendors including Huawei Device and ZTE, the sources pointed out.
MID market grows 72% in 2010, says The Information Network [Dec 29, 2010]
Strong growth in smartphones and the huge success of the iPad spurred record growth in mobile Internet devices (MID) for 2010, according to research firm The Information Network.
“The MID market grew 72% in 2010 to 314 million units,” noted Robert Castellano, president of The Information Network. “By way of comparison, 2009 registered only a 20% gain.”
Growth was helped by a 90% gain in e-book reader shipments, a 60% gain in smartphones, and nearly 20 million iPads sold. For 2011, unit shipments of MID devices will moderate to a 44% growth.
ARM owns the MID space. It owns 95% of the mobile phone market and 85% of the smartphone market by unit shipments. ARM processors are being manufactured in the best semiconductor facilities. Companies that are currently or formerly ARM licensees include Alcatel, Atmel, Broadcom, Cirrus Logic, Digital Equipment Corporation, Freescale, Intel (through DEC), LG Group, Marvell Technology Group, NEC, NVIDIA, NXP (previously Philips), Oki, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp, ST Microelectronics, Symbios Logic, Texas Instruments, VLSI Technology, Yamaha and ZiiLABS, and TSMC.
Assuring HTML5 et al stability for developers à la Microsoft: splitting the evolving specifications into “site-ready” and “experimental” for the years coming
What is Microsoft’s approach to assure HTML5 et al stability when web developers are absolutely negative about that based on their previous experience?
Microsoft’s answer came crystal clearly two days ago in a blog post quoted below. But before coming to that let’s include here the whole closing section of that post because it is summarizing the Microsoft approach about HTML5 et al stability very well (emphasis is mine):
Looking Ahead
In developing IE9, we considered how different specifications are still evolving at different rates. IE9 supports technologies that, while not always finished, are developed enough to avoid the problems that WebSockets illustrate today.
In the IE9 product, developers can expect site-ready HTML5 so they can take advantage of the best of HTML5 that is ready and can still experiment with emerging HTML5 with HTML5 Labs. By keeping these separate, developers get what they need without the negative consequences of co-mingling very different things in the same browser.
IE9 offers support for the most relevant, real-world web patterns that developers are using today as well as the HTML5 patterns we expect to become more mainstream. By relevant and real-world, we mean the technologies with the broadest impact for browser users (e.g. CSS ahead of MathML). By support, we mean providing developers a consistent programming model that enables the same mark-up. The goal is supporting great new capabilities, ideally in a way that interoperates or will interoperate soon across browsers.
This approach (along with its supporting points, like test suites and “same markup” as a goal) has garnered strong support from developers. It’s also resulted in some surprising headlines over the last year, like “Only Microsoft gets web standards” according to “Mozilla man [who] blasts Apple and Google for HTML5 abuse,” from The Register.
In this context of unfinished technology, measuring how much HTML5 different browsers support through “benchmarks” does not make much sense. In particular, many of these tests (like Acid 3) include different partial collections of unfinished standards, while they exclude deep or broad assessments of the quality of the implementations. The key questions for tests are how appropriate is their scope, how accurate and rigorous are the individual tests, and how comprehensive is their coverage. The standards bodies involved in the process of developing the standards (like W3C and Ecma) are a great forum for the development of trustworthy, high-quality tests.
Professional website developers are busy. They write a code for a living and genuinely don’t have the spare time to wade through comments on all these under construction specifications and keep track of every build of every browser. With this approach, we make it easier to take advantage of the capabilities that are stable and ready for prime time. We remove much of the guess work for developers of working with a moving target. The result is more time for site developers to innovate and create better web experiences.
Back in March when we released the first platform preview of IE9, we were clear that we love HTML5 so much we want it to actually work. One aspect of that involves using the whole PC to run HTML with the best performance. Another aspect is working with community and standards bodies on test suites. Making sure that developers avoid the frustration of wasted time re-writing sites over and over as technologies change – and that consumers avoid frustration of sites that break easily – is just as important.
In other words Microsoft’s approach is, as defined in the same day post Prototyping Early W3C HTML5 Specifications by Jean Paoli, GM, Interoperability Strategy:
… to implement standards as they become site-ready for broader adoption.
Writing Sites to IE Based on Stable HTML5
For developers, this means that they can write sites to Internet Explorer and be confident that it is based on stable HTML5 and will work in future browser upgrades. For users, it means that sites continue to work as they upgrade their browsers and they don’t get locked in to older browsers.
At the same time, Microsoft sees an important need in continuing to drive experimentation and testing of new specifications in the standards organizations. It is part of the process of ensuring that specifications are actually ready for real-world usage.
This new HTML5 Labs Web site is the place where our Interoperability Labs will publish prototype implementations of certain unstable and in-progress W3C, IETF, ECMA and other standards specifications still undergoing a lot of change. So, developers should expect that code and web pages based on these prototypes will have to be re-written as the specifications mature.
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So please experiment with these prototypes and tell us and other working group participants whether the APIs are usable. We are making them available to help improve the final specifications.
Other implementers can use these prototypes to determine whether we have interpreted the specifications in the same way, and a larger audience can get a better sense of what potential will be unlocked when these specifications have stabilized into interoperable implemented standards.
Also, please participate in the appropriate standards bodies to help finalize the specifications.
Details
HTML5, Site-Ready and Experimental [Dec 21] by Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer (emphasis is mine):
With many HTML5 technologies still under active development, our approach is to give developers better choices and avoid false dichotomies around standards support. The IE9 browser has site-ready HTML5 support that developers and consumers can depend on. We will also offer developers “HTML5 Labs” for more experimental technologies still under development. By clearly separating prototype implementations from mainstream browser product ones, we can avoid many negative consequences.
In the IE9 product, we’re delivering on the key parts of HTML5 that are site-ready. IE9 offers support for real-world web patterns that developers are using today as well as the HTML5 patterns we expect to become more mainstream. IE9 does this because we want to improve interoperability on the web by providing developers a consistent programming model through the same mark-up. The goal is supporting great new capabilities, ideally in a way that interoperates or will interoperate soon across browsers.
We will also offer prototype implementations for the more experimental or unfinished parts of HTML5 that some developers may want to try, but consumers can’t depend on yet. We will be explicit about the implementations that are more prototype than product. These prototypes are how we balance providing a product for millions of consumers while actively engaging in speculative technology discussions with developers and enthusiasts and avoid confusing either group. You can read more about that here [ Prototyping Early W3C HTML5 Specifications [Dec 21] ].
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Implementing a technology while the blueprints that describe it are still changing significantly causes many problems. In this section, we’ll use the experience of WebSockets to illustrate common challenges of under construction technologies. Below, through the transparency of Mozilla’s process, you can read for yourself how several different problems played out.
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One tech publication wrote that “the Web Sockets history illustrates some pitfalls of the style and pace of Web standards development,” and that “including support for a specification [that] wasn’t done” is just the latest wrinkle. The article’s headline describes “the risk of unfinished standards,” while another article describes “emerging Web standards like WebGL and WebSockets,” and a comment from a Mozilla leader here refers to “speculative features.”
WebSockets is just one of many, many unfinished, emerging, and speculative features. Rushing ahead with implementation while the blueprints are changing a lot creates dissatisfaction. This (warning: potentially NSFW) video dramatizes that developer dissatisfaction. That dissatisfaction is the result of supporting unfinished, emerging, and speculative features in the mainline product.
The question is how to balance the implementation of these under construction technologies (in order to resolve under construction issues) with the needs of developers (who don’t like re-writing their code over and over to get new capabilities) and the needs of consumers (who expect sites and browsers to just work). Today, iPhone and iPad 4.2 support WebSockets. Firefox and Opera have recently disabled their implementations because of (among other things) the security and compatibility concerns.
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One alternative approach to these experimental features is being much more explicit about implementations that are more prototype than product. This is the approach Microsoft is taking. You can read more about it here. Through these prototypes we balance the objective of providing a product for millions of consumers and engaging in early speculative discussions with developers and enthusiasts, without confusing either group.
There are many other technologies under development today that are still under construction. Because they are not site-ready today and will not be ready, relevant, and real-world before we release the IE9 product, these emerging standards are susceptible to the same problems and negative consequences that WebSockets has faced. Some technologies are in transition and being reconciled with others (or potentially abandoned in favor of others). SMIL animations and SVG fonts, though they are used in the Acid 3 test, are on the way out in favor of CSS animations and WOFF. The Web SQL specification, for example, was formally taken off the Recommendation track at the most recent TPAC with the emergence of IndexedDB as a better path. IndexedDB is itself an emerging and unfinished standard, along with WebSockets, the File API and WebGL (as the Ars Technica article above points out).
Site-ready also looks at the larger context of developer needs today and tomorrow and the viable alternatives as well as the state of the standards process. For example, CSS3 is an enormous set of technologies. IE9 already implements many CSS3 modules that are site-ready. Several other CSS modules (like CSS3 Gradients) are still emerging and unfinished. Other modules have perfectly fine interoperable alternatives, like using script in place of CSS3 Transitions and CSS3 Animations. For other technologies, like web workers, other considerations apply as well. Web workers introduce complex multi-threaded programming concepts to JavaScript, and require extensive prototyping (just like WebSockets) to fully explore the impact on developers and the broader web programming model.
There are many technologies that can easily play out the way WebSockets have. Developers and consumers are better off if these technologies are brought forward as explicit prototypes rather than in the product that so many people depend on. WebSockets and the IndexedDB web storage are the first prototypes in the new program. Some experimental CSS3 modules are potential candidates for prototypes, along with other technologies (e.g. the File API). This is a process we’re excited to work through with the community.
Additional information:
Introducing the WebSockets Prototype [Dec 21]
IndexedDB Prototype Available for Internet Explorer [Dec 21]
Prototyping Early W3C HTML5 Specifications [Dec 21] by Jean Paoli, GM, Interoperability Strategy:
Today we launched the HTML5 Labs Web site, a place where we prototype early and not yet fully stable drafts of specifications developed by the W3C and other standard organizations.
These prototypes will help us have informed discussions with developer communities, and give implementation experience with the draft specifications that will generate feedback to improve the eventual standards. It also lets us give the community some visibility on those specifications we consider interesting from a scenario point of view, but which are still not at the stage where we can consider them ready for official product support.
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The first two prototypes we are delivering today are Web Sockets and IndexedDB.
WebSockets is a technology designed to simplify much of the complexity around bi-directional, full-duplex communications channels, over a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket. It can be implemented in web browsers, web servers as well as used by any client or server application. The WebSocket API is currently being standardized by the W3C and the WebSocket protocol is being standardized by the IETF.
For its part, IndexedDB is a developing W3C Web standard for the storage of large amounts of structured data in the browser, as well as for high performance searches on this data using indexes. IndexedDB can be used for browser implemented functions like bookmarks, as well as for web applications like email. IndexedDB also enables offline scenarios where the browser might be disconnected from the Internet or server.
We chose these two specifications primarily because they are potentially very useful but currently unstable. These are the two specifications we currently believe the community stands to benefit the most from, but both are in flux.
The details of the HyBi protocol underlying WebSockets are being hotly debated in IETF right now, and the IndexedDB spec will soon be updated to reflect decisions made at a recent W3C working group meeting.
Announcing HTML5 Labs [Dec 21]
As you hopefully know by now, despite the hype, HTML 5 is not a completed specification. In fact, back in 2008, the author of the specification, Ian Hickson, estimated HTML 5 wouldn’t be a Proposed Recommendation until 2022! Indeed, the W3C site shows there are still significant aspects of the HTML 5, CSS 3, DOM and other specifications being fleshed out – just take a look at the ‘warning’ in every W3C Working Draft: Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable.
Waiting until 2022 for all i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed is obviously not an option though. It’s infeasible to expect a drop of all these technologies at one fell swoop, and there are certainly aspects of the HTML 5 and related specifications that are relatively solid today: canvas and and semantic tags, to name a few. These are the types of stable ‘standards’ you’ll continue to see implemented in the IE 9 beta and the continuing cycle of Platform Previews.
But what about those bleeding-edge features? The ones like WebSockets (currently an Editor’s draft) that Firefox 4 and Opera recently disabled due to security issues? Or features that other browsers are “implementing” with vendor-specific extensions and the such?
There’s clearly need for a balancing act between providing a dependable, solid browsing experience to millions of users and incorporating new features that haven’t been completely vetted in the wild. With his post today, Dean Hachamovitch, announces another facet of Microsoft’s strategy to walk this tightrope between responsible development and active adoption of emerging web standards.
Microsoft Opens HTML5 Labs for Developers [Dec 21]
HTML5 Labs currently offers two prototypes: WebSockets extension for IE and IndexedDB for IE. WebSockets is designed to enable “bi-directional, full-duplex communications” between a client and server via “a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket,” according to a blog post by Jean Paoli, Microsoft’s general manager of interoperability strategy. IndexedDB aims at enabling the storage of “large amounts of structured data in the browser,” accessible both online and offline.
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Philippe Le Hegaret, interaction domain leader at the W3C, noted in October that some of the HTML 5 spec shouldn’t be used because of interoperability problems.
“The problem we’re facing right now is there is already a lot of excitement for HTML5, but it’s a little too early to deploy it because we’re running into interoperability issues,” Le Hegaret said at that time.
Microsoft, in rolling out its HTML5 Labs site, essentially agrees with Le Hegaret’s position, according to Paoli.
“We are in complete alignment between Philippe and Art; it’s more [about] the articulation,” Paoli said in a phone interview. “He [Philippe] actually wrote a blog after that explaining what he really meant. What we are saying is the same thing. We’re saying that every feature in HTML 5 — and there are many of them — every single one of them is not at the same level of stability.”
It could be as long as 12 more years before W3C Recommendation status is reached for the entire HTML 5 spec, but browser makers have already made parts of it practical to use through interoperability testing. Hachamovitch has described Microsoft’s position with HTML 5 as “write once, run anywhere.” If that goal is achieved, it will be a big change from the days when Web developers suffered with having to code for IE 6’s quirks, causing perpetual rewrites.
The HTML 5 spec is actually progressing, according to a comment by Giorgio Sardo, a Microsoft senior technical evangelist.
“HTML5 made lot of progress in recent months, [with] the HTML5 specification expected to go to Last Call (kind of feature complete) in the first 2-3 months of 2011,” Sardo wrote in a November blog post. “From there, the spec will move to Candidate Recommendation and there will be a call for implementers.”
Hanvon – E-Ink strategic e-reader alliance for price/volume leadership supplementing Hanvon’s premium strategy mostly based on an alliance with Microsoft and Intel
Following the strategic alliance between Marvell, Pixel Qi and OLPC on extremely low-cost consumer devices specially built for the cloud there are other cloud related alliances aimed at mass produced clients with sun readability. One of them is the Hanvon – E-Ink alliance which is the most visible and product-wise the most developed one. Such a strategy is also quite well supplementing Hanvon’s premium strategy which is mostly based on the Microsoft platform. Its cooperation on the new convertible classmate PC design with Intel is also going sharply against the Marvell, Pixel Qi and OLPC effort. Hanvon’s approach is also well aligned with component technology makers (such as Epson Seiko) tightly cooperating with E-Ink to sharply increase the quality and refresh rate of electrophoretic display (EPD) technology in 2011. See the latest update: E Ink and Epson achieve world-leading ePaper resolution [May 23, 2011]
Worth to read along with this: Gartner: media tablets are the new segment next to mobile PCs and desktops, as well as web- and app-capable mobile phones [April 16, 2011]
Regarding E Ink Holdings’ market position see the Undermining E-Ink and single-purpose E-readers [Aug 23, 2010 – Jan 10, 2011] report. What follows here is mostly summarizing Hanvon’s (Hanwang’s) position and future plans/opportunities.
Hanvon turns to e-book reader solutions combining hardware and software [Dec 28]:
As China-based e-book reader maker Hanvon Technology has recently achieved sales over one million units, the company plans to expand its business model from only selling hardware to providing solutions that combine hardware and software, according to an executive of Hanvon.
Hanvon is optimistic about the sales of e-book readers in 2011 and believes the company will have better shipment growth than the market average. However, the company declined to give a forecast.
Sources from upstream component makers also pointed out that despite consumer purchases of e-book readers in China are in fact increasing, 40% of the e-book reader sales in China are still contributed by government or enterprises, as they are giving the devices away as gifts. Since the contribution from these procurement orders are difficult to estimate, therefore Hanvon was unable to give a forecast for its performance.
As for tablet PCs, since Hanvon currently still cannot find an advantage in the market, the company will maintain its focus on e-book readers.
E Ink Holdings (EIH) – formerly Prime View International (PVI) – is the global leader of the electrophoretic display (EPD) market, while Hanvon is the leading vendor of e-book readers in China. … The E Ink chairman believes the e-book market will have high growth for the next 10 years, while his Hanvon counterpart thinks there should be more China e-book reader brands. …
Q: Can you talk about the current development and cooperation between EIH and Hanvon.
Scott Liu: EIH has improved the whiteness, contrast ratio and color performance of the new color EPD. Hanvon is handling the overall product design, and they will focus on special markets such as educational institutions, private companies and government offices for the color e-book reader.
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Liu Yingjian: EIH and Hanvon have been working together for many years. I would like to pay my respect to EIH, which decided to explore the potential of e-paper, including the acquisition of E Ink in order to have a tight control of the supply chain, when most people in the market were skeptical about such a sector.
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Our expectations for e-book readers are firstly demand from paperless offices and then the educational market. Paperless demand is huge, as vendors do not have to worry about content, and it fits the current popular trend of low-carbon life-style. In the educational market, bookbags are too heavy for students, and there will be huge demand.
Q: Will Hanvon and EIH have further cooperation in the educational market in the future?
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Liu Yingjian: We have had several meetings regarding the educational market, and we’ve concluded that there are several lines that we cannot trespass.
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Hence we have several proposals for promotions in the educational market, First, we will focus on the regions with better economic development as consumers in these regions have the means to purchase e-book readers. Second, we will focus on non-textbook reading materials as wealthy families may purchase the products for their children. Third, we will run trials at junior high schools, universities or some other grades. I believe the educational market will be substantial in 10 years.
Regional trials have been a success, with Shanghai being the most active region. Shanghai is the richest area in China with the highest GDP, and the municipal government has made a five-year plan to popularize the use of e-book readers for educational purposes, and a lot of preparation work needs to be done.
Q: Is there a concrete plan regarding cooperation between EIH and Hanvon for the educational market?
Liu Yingjian: The color e-book reader using EIH’s EPD will be tried out by a class of 500 students in Shanghai in the semester starting in September 2011. But trial use of e-book readers in classroom has already started in Yangzhou. We are now able to meet the two basic requirements for the educational market: color display and handwriting input.
Q: There are companies like Foxconn in Taiwan that have introduced e-book readers for students using TFT LCD panels or Mirasol displays from Qualcomm. What’s EIH’s opinion about the competitiveness of other technologies? What is Hanvon’s evaluation of other technologies?
Scott Liu: In fact, other technologies are not mature yet, while EIH has already introduced its color EPD, which is ready for mass production. But as far as I know, makers using other technologies usually will introduce products when the technologies are still at the lab-development phase, and it will be impossible for them to reach mass production in just a few months.
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Q: What does EIH think about Qualcomm’s investment in Taiwan in the future, and the fact that Qualcomm will soon start mass production?
Scott Liu: Based on my understanding of Qualcomm’s technology, there are some difficulties for mass production. Even if Qualcomm starts mass production, it will still not able to compete with EPD due to high cost, especially with the high investment amount for setting up a new 4.5G plant, and the depreciation cost could kill a newly developed business.
On the contrary, EIH is mass producing its EPDs on fully depreciated production lines. It has recently added a 5G line and possibly will add a 6G line in the future. EIH has absolute advantage in terms of production capacity. I think there may be a market for Qualcomm’s display products, but judging from its volume production cost, Qualcomm will probably focus on high-end applications.
Liu Yingjian: It is a challenge to produce reflective display products, but it have been proven successful in black and white displays. However, color displays based on reflective technology remain a big challenge for production. But a lot of people commented that the performance of our color EPD displays exhibited (at FPD International) was of high standard.
The products we have launched are better than colored newspapers, but are still worse than magazines and TVs. The color performance of color e-paper is not as rich as TFT-LCD, but what’s more important is that color e-paper does not have side effects on our eyes.
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Q: Any other expectations for color e-book readers?
Scott Liu: The basic application for color e-paper is still the e-book reader, and we don’t think that we should sacrifice the quality of black-and-white while doing color. The present color EPD is the first version, which means it is a product that meets the basic EIH standard, and the company will continue to improve the product.
The present color EPD uses color filters. We are making maximum use of the high-reflectivity characteristic of color filters, but this is only the short-term solution. For the long-term solution, we still hope to develop a particle-based electrophoresis technology to dislay colors without color filters. The development will take a longer time, and I expect some achievements in the next few years.
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Source: Digitimes Research, December 2010
Part I. The e-reader market
E-paper maker announces income spike [Aug 11]
Sales of global e-readers are expected to double to 20 million units next year as retail price has fallen to less than US$200 plus contract service
Global sales of 20-25 million e-book readers projected for 2011, says E Ink chairman [Oct 28]
Global e-book reader sales in 2010 are expected to reach 10 million units at least, and the forecast for 2011 is upward adjusted from 18 million units originally, to 20-25 million units, according to chairman Scott Liu for Taiwan-based E Ink Holdings.
e-Reader Market Will Reach 54M Units in 2015 by Displaybank’s e-Reader Industry Trend and Market Forecacast [Nov 16]
Tapping educational e-book reader market needs 2-3 years, says E Ink chairman [Aug 18]
Liu indicated that the Shanghai government aims to replace printed textbooks with e-books in five years, while the Korea government also plans to do the same by 2014.
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EIH currently is the supplier of e-book readers in a trial program for adopting e-books at school in Jiangsu, China, Liu added.
Although some countries are stepping up efforts promoting e-reading in schools, it may take years before e-books can really start replacing printed textbooks, as the process involves so many different sectors ranging from content, hardware, platform development to government policies, market observers said.
Global e-book reader shipments to be 2-3 times higher in 2H10, says E Ink chairman [Aug 11]
Price-cut competition for e-book readers among global vendors including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony and Hanvon is expected to stimulate demand in the second half of 2010, with total shipments expected to be 2-3 times those in the first half, according to Scott Liu, chairman of Taiwan-based EPD (electrophoretic display) maker E Ink Holding.
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Liu indicated that with the prices for e-book readers dropping significantly, players who only produce e-reading devices with no content support are coming under threats of being forced out of the market by the first-tier players such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble who will continue to dominate the market.
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E Ink added that clients are now able to run pricing campaigns because their EPD orders have already reached the agreed amounts, allowing them to have discounted prices, Liu said, adding that his company is happy to offer the discounts to help stimulate growth of the e-reading market.
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Amazon’s latest 6-inch Kindle without 3G connection only costs US$139, reaching the pricing sweet spot, and it is expected to generate significant growth for the vendor, he said.
Liu said that vendors will soon be able to provide sub-US$100 e-book readers judging from the market growth, and E Ink will help clients further lower the production costs.
Global e-book reader shipments fall short of forecast in 2Q10, says Digitimes Research [July 28]
A total of 1.35 million e-book readers were shipped to the global market in the second quarter of 2010, 33.2% fewer than the originally projected 2.02 million units, chiefly because shipments of new models were delayed to the third quarter, according to Digitimes Research.
Two other factors also prevented shipments from reaching the target. Telecom carrier China Mobile Communications’ subsidized sales of e-book readers were weaker-than-expected in the China market, and volume shipments of SiPix’s e-paper solutions were delayed.
Digitimes Insight: China e-book reader market smaller than expected in 2010 [July 14]
Digitimes Research has downward adjusted its 2010 projected total e-book reader shipments in the China market from 1.5 million units originally to 900,000-1 million units, as China Mobile Communications’ subsidized sales of its e-reading device have so far been much below expectations.
China Mobile Communications originally planned to procure one million e-book readers for subsidized sales in the China market in 2010, but the company actually only purchased 30,000-40,000 units in the first half of 2010, Digitimes Research noted.
Worldwide e-book reader shipments to reach 28 million by 2013, says Digitimes Research [March 24]
Global e-book reader shipments will increase from 700,000 units in 2008 to 28 million units in 2013, representing a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 386%, according to a recently published report from Digitimes Research.
The special report on e-book readers also indicated that the total market value for e-book reader shipments would surpass US$3 billion in 2013, up from only US$244 million in 2008.
…
China, where the government is promoting e-reading as one of its major policies, is expected to become the second-largest single market for e-book readers in 2010.
Demise of the printed word? [Sept 6]
The desire to read books digitally on Apple iPads, Amazon Kindles or devices made in China such as Founder or Hanvon, is perhaps greater in China, where gadgets are adored, than any other market except the United States.
…
Many of the world’s publishers believe what happens in China could alter the axis of the global publishing industry and condemn what we now know as the paper book to history.
The move to digital transforms the business model of publishing and who gets what slice of the cake.
Publishers fear they could become marginalized or cut out of the process altogether as the new operators in the market – those providing the platforms – want to become content providers themselves and sign their own deals with authors.
…
One concern publishers have in China is piracy. Already on many street corners, forged copies of many titles of paper books are sold for a fraction of their normal retail price.
What scares publishers is that ripping off digital books is potentially easier and they don’t have to be sold on street stalls but could be sold in any part of the world in an instant.
A high-tech leap may put China front and center [Sept 6]
Lack of modern bookstores may make e-reading a public preference
John Makinson, chairman and chief executive of Penguin, a major international publisher, believes China could lead the world in the way people buy books.
…
“One of the key features of the Chinese market is that the physical book retailing infrastructure is not quite as well developed as in other markets,” he said. “There is an opportunity for digital publishing because the book retailing market is not as efficient as in some other markets. There are few book shops and there are problems in getting early delivery of books,” he said.
…
“To some extent, it could sort of leapfrog traditional publishing here, just as mobile telephony in some markets has leapfrogged fixed line phone networks,” he said. “You have a relatively conservative publishing and retail culture here while at the same time you have a very large community of book lovers engaged in online activity.”
…
He said according to industry figures e-books now make up around 10 percent of the total market in the United States and that portion was growing at 300 percent a year. “We have no idea when it might start flattening out. I think it is heading for at least 20 to 30 per cent of the overall market,” he said.
More people are reading on screens, not on paper [May 7]
The value of the digital publishing industry surpassed that of the traditional publishing industry last year for the first time in China, according to a blue book on the cultural industry released on Thursday.
The scale of the digital publishing industry hit an unprecedented high of 75 billion yuan ($11 billion) last year, up by 40 percent year on year, the blue book said.
“Online books, cell phone books and digital books have become popular among Chinese readers,” Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Cultural Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said at a press conference.
The country’s cultural industry totaled about 800 billion yuan in 2009, according to an annual report on the industry’s development released by Social Sciences Academic Press on Thursday.
The report says most of China’s publishing houses have started producing of digital books.
About 75 percent of newspapers have launched online papers and 55 percent of them are providing SMS (short message service) news, the report says.
About 2.8 percent of Chinese adults have stopped reading anything on paper and have become loyal readers of digitally published products, the report said.
…
The number of cell phone users in China reached 780 million at the end of March, of which 155 million are mobile readers, according to figures from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
China Mobile, the world’s biggest cell phone carrier in terms of subscribers, runs e-book stores and provides wireless access to online publications, such as e-books, comics and magazines.
The subscription fee for its online e-book store is up to five yuan per month, 40 percent of which will be shared with copyright owners, according to China Mobile.
…
“In recent years, the scale of the traditional publishing industry has remained at around 50 to 60 billion yuan a year, and it relies heavily on textbook publishing,” Gao Shusheng, an official with the publicity department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said in an earlier interview.
“Many publishing houses are facing a crisis and digital publishing might help them break the ice,” he said.
Yan Xiaohong, deputy director of General Administration of Press and Publication, also said mobile reading has shown strong vitality and huge market potential in China.
“I spent 15 yuan on mobile reading last year, and I’m planning to buy an electric book this month,” said Yang Jie, a 27-year-old Beijinger. Reading an electric book on the bus is “fashionable,” and three to five yuan for reading an electric book online is affordable, she said.
China Mobile platform puts digital publications at fingertips [May 6]
China Mobile on Wednesday launched an online platform that enables its subscribers to read and download digital publications through cell phones and e-book readers, as part of its effort to profit from the country’s emerging mobile reading market.
The world’s biggest cellphone carrier in terms of subscribers kicked off an e-book store similar to Apple’s iBook store, which gives users wireless access to a series of online publications such as e-books, comics and magazines.
“Reading habits have fundamentally changed,” said Gao Nianshu, general manager of China Mobile’s data department. He said the company hopes the new platform will attract over 200 million users in the near future.
…
Gao said China Mobile’s new e-book platform, which currently covers about 40 percent of the best selling books in the country, has attracted over 15 million users during four months of testing in eight areas.
…
But … although about 45 percent of Chinese mobile Internet users read books at least once a day by mobile phone, few of them are willing to pay for online content.
…
It was reported earlier this week that China Mobile plans to team up with Foxconn Electronics of Taiwan province to produce its own e-book readers.
Part II. New technologies for 2011
Color Comes to E Ink Screens [Nov 7]
However, the new color E Ink display, while an important technological breakthrough, is not as sharp and colorful as LCD. Unlike an LCD screen, the colors are muted, as if one were looking at a faded color photograph. In addition, E Ink cannot handle full-motion video. At best, it can show simple animations.
These are reasons Amazon, Sony and the other major e-reader makers are not yet embracing it. Amazon says it will offer color E Ink when it is ready; the company sees color as useful in cookbooks and children’s books, and it offers these books in color through its Kindle application for LCD devices. Sony is also taking a wait-and-see approach.
How E Ink’s Triton Color Displays Work, In E-Readers and Beyond [Nov 9]
E Ink developed the Triton screen in conjunction with a group of partners, including Epson, Texas Instruments, Marvell, and the semiconductor companies Maxim and Freescale, all of whom worked on the electronic components of the [previous black and white only] Pearl screen. In particular, Epson played a key role, providing the color filters’ controller chip.
Underneath, it’s still the same white, black and grayscale electrophoretic pigments; it’s only when filtered through the RGB overlay that the image appears in color. To reach for an historical analogy, it’s not totally dissimilar from film’s Technicolor process, which shot in black-and-white film strips through color filters, then reverse-processed.
Because the underlying technology is identical, Triton’s contrast, energy usage, viewing angle are all essentially the same as the Pearl. The image update or refresh rate for monochrome is the same (240 ms), but color animation can take up to about one full second.
Unlike a LCD display, though, pictures on the Triton don’t need to update the entire screen: a moving figure in the foreground might be refreshed while the background remains identical — just like traditional cel animation.
Epson and E Ink Announce State-of-the-Art Color EPD Controller [May 18]
Seiko Epson Corporation … and E Ink Corporation … announced a new jointly developed display controller IC. The S1D13524 is a high-performance EPD controller with a built-in color processor for E Ink’s VizplexTM-enabled electronic color paper displays.
…
Yingjian Liu, chairman of Hanvon Technology Co., Ltd, a leading eReader provider said, “Epson and E Ink’s color EPD controller is a revolutionary innovation in the eReader industry. Thanks to this breakthrough technology announcement, eReader lovers will now be able to enjoy reading colorful eNewspapers and eTextbooks. This new innovation will help expand the contents for eReaders, thereby helping to preserve the environment and changing the way in which people obtain information.” Hanvon is planning to launch its own colorful eReader at the end of the year.
The S1D13524 is the ideal choice for E Ink color EPD designs and design upgrades. Samples of the Epson S1D13524 will be available in June. Sample price is $24. Production quantities will be available in Dec 2010.
Epson to Provide Display Controller Platform that Sharply Improves e-Paper Product Performance [Oct 27]
– Platform to enable laser-quality images and high-speed refreshes –
Seiko Epson Corporation (“Epson”, TSE: 6724) today announced that it has developed a new display controller platform for electronic reading devices and other electronic paper products that provides laser-sharp image quality and rapid refreshes. The company will begin shipping the platform to e-paper-based product manufacturers in April 2011.
…
The display control platform will enable e-paper product manufacturers to speed up their time to market by allowing them to efficiently develop products with fast display refresh times and the ability to display images as sharp and clear as any produced by a laser printer. Notably, the platform will facilitate the development of products for business and education applications, which typically require higher image quality and faster displays.
Epson is the world’s no.1* supplier of controller ICs for e-paper displays, partnering with E Ink Holdings Inc. of Hsinchu, Taiwan, the world’s number 1 supplier of e-paper.
…
The display controller platform employs a newly developed e-paper display driving scheme that is unlike those used in current e-book readers. The new driving scheme capitalizes on high-speed image processing technology originally developed for Epson’s photo-quality printers to enable e-paper displays with resolutions of 300 dpi and higher to be refreshed at high speed, which is ideal for higher education, professional office and general business environments.
E-paper devices outfitted with the display controller platform and a high-resolution e-paper display will render intricate content, such as “kanji” characters, mathematical formulas and engineering drawings, as well as illustrations, photographs and other images that require smooth gradations, much more clearly than current e-paper displays. They will also be able to flip through the pages of an e-book much faster than existing e-readers. When combined with sensors, these devices will provide powerful handwriting recognition, a critical function for business applications. The sharp improvement in readability and usability are expected to fuel the popularity of e-paper products in Japan, China, and other regions where Chinese characters are used, as well as in business and education applications where huge amounts of data have to be processed.
E Ink Announces Next Generation Display Platform [July 1]
E Ink® Corporation, the leading developer and marketer of electronic paper display technology, today announced the Q2 release of its next generation display technology, Pearl. With Pearl, E Ink expands the capabilities of reflective displays, bringing electronic paper performance to the next level. With the whitest reflective displays in the industry, and a contrast ratio now approximately 50 percent greater than today’s products, text on Pearl “pops” from the page, enabling a reading experience most similar to reading text on printed paper.
…
The E Ink Pearl design builds on the current generation of Vizplex designs, which is used in millions of eReader devices today. Due to a unique and proven two pigment system that is extremely stable, the current E Ink products in the market today have demonstrated long life and high reliability, enabling a whole new class of consumer products.
Images and text become crisp on the screen as the contrast between the background and item of interest is increased. E Ink Pearl raises the bar for displays used in digital reading. This allows for eReaders to go from a contrast ratio typical of newspapers, to a higher contrast ratio typical of paperback books. The crisp text and detailed graphics also continue to remain pleasant to view when E Ink products are enjoyed outside. In addition, with 16 gray level depth, E Ink Pearl offers the sharpest rendering of images and allows product developers to display images with smooth tones and rich detail.
Part III. The Chinese market
E Ink to set up subsidiary in China to develop e-book hardware [Dec 16]
Small- to medium-size TFT-LCD panel and electrophoretic display (EPD) maker E Ink Holdings will invest US$6.61 million to set up a subsidiary in China to design and develop hardware for e-book readers for the local education market, according to the company.
… the company will not mass produce e-book readers. This investment in China is to provide an incentive to the textbook market to commence its transition to e-paper
China market: Hanvon to lower e-book reader prices by average of CNY500 a year, says report [Dec 7]
Hanvon Technology, the largest China-based vendor of e-book readers, has reached an initial economy-scale of over one million users in the China market and will keep reducing prices by an average of CNY500 (US$75) each year until it reaches production cost levels, according to a report by China-based Beijing News. … Hanvon will rely on sales of online content for profitability, the paper quoted Hanvon chairman Liu Ying-jian as saying. Hanvon will even offer free e-book readers, Liu indicated.
…
Hanvon has so far adopted EPD (electrophoretic display) panels supplied by Taiwan-based E Ink Holdings, and will cooperate with additional suppliers including Qualcomm MEMS Technologies and Fujitsu
Hanwang to maintain over 70% of China e-book reader market share in 2010 [Nov 24]
Hanwang Technology’s e-book reader shipments are expected to exceed one million units in 2010, an increase of 150% from about 400,000 units in 2009, and the vendor is expected to maintain an over 70% share of the e-book reader market in China for the year.
Hanwang is optimistic about the education market and expects significant growth in the future, noting that there are over 100 million elementary school students. Hanwang noted that flexible substrates will help to boost demand in the education market because they are more robust than glass substrates.
China market: Hanvon lowers e-book readers by 200-300 yuan on average [Nov 16]:
Hanvon Technology, currently the largest vendor of e-book readers in the China market, has lowered its retail prices by 200-300 yuan (US$30-45) on average, with the lowest price reaching 950 yuan, according to report by China-based Beijing Morning Post. The price war for e-book readers in the China market has kicked off and there are expected to be rounds of price-cut competition, the source cited China-based consulting company Analysys International as indicating.
…
In addition to Hanvon, fellow vendor MReader has cut the retail price for its S600 e-book reader to 999 yuan and another vendor Gorld has cut the price for its 500T to about 1,000 yuan.
Hanvon color e-book reader to hit the market in February 2011 [Nov 11]
Hanvon will start selling its new 9.7-inch color e-book reader featuring E Ink Holding’s latest color e-paper, Triton, in February 2011 with a selling price of 3,500 yuan (US$527.59) and is accepting pre-orders now.
…
Hanvon chairman Liu Ying-jian noted that thanks to E Ink’s cooperation, Hanvon was able to launch the world’s first color e-book reader with better-than-expected color performance. Hanvon will launch a Wi-Fi version with a selling price of 3,500 yuan, and latter a 3G version at a price of 200-300 yuan more.
In addition to competing with iPad, the 9.7-inch color e-book reader is also eyeing the commercial market as the product allows users to read and modify PowerPoint files, reducing the usage of actual paper and is easy to carry around, Liu added.
E Ink Announces Color ePaper [Nov 10]
“Color ePaper will enable richer content in eBooks, as well as enabling a broader array of other reading devices, for content such as magazines, newspapers, and educational materials,” according to Paul Semenza, Senior Vice President, DisplaySearch. “We foresee market demand for ePaper displays in these applications reaching $5 billion by 2016.”
…
For image-rich information applications showing charts, graphs, maps, photos, comics and advertising, color displays made with Triton Imaging Film enable ultra-low power and high mobility devices with a paper-like experience. In addition to 16 levels of grayscale, Triton is capable of displaying thousands of colors. And just like E Ink’s grayscale ePaper products, Triton’s crisp text and detailed color graphics are fully viewable in direct sunlight.
INTERVIEW: Aiming for No. 1 in e-reader sector [June 2]
Taipei Times: Hanvon Technology Co (漢王科技) enjoys a strong presence in the Chinese e-reader market and you aim to become the world’s top brand. How do you plan to do that and what is your timeline?
Liu Yingjian (劉迎建): We are currently the world’s No. 2 e-reader brand [after Amazon], and we will become No. 1 next year, or in 2012 at the latest. China has the biggest e-reader market. With our huge scale in shipments, we have advantages in lower costs and product functionality with our proprietary Mandarin-character recognition software.
Our goal was to ship 500,000 e-readers in China last year, but we sold only 266,000 units, as our upstream suppliers weren’t able to supply the volumes we requested. In the first quarter, we shipped 180,000 e-readers, and the total volume for the year will definitely surpass 1 million.
…
TT: The iPad is now taking the world by storm and Acer Inc (宏碁) last week announced that it would join hands with China’s Founder Group (北大方正集團) to move into China’s PC and e-reader market. How do you view the competition?
Liu: I regard [Apple co-founder] Steve Jobs as a hero and Apple itself is an outstanding company. Tablet PCs have been in the market for so long, but just didn’t take off. The launch of the iPad revived consumers’ interest. Apple’s business model, applications, stylish gadgets and the enjoyment these devices bring to consumers are amazing.
But this doesn’t mean that Apple products will also receive overwhelming response in China. The cultural essence is the part Western firms fail to offer. Hanvon has created computerized Mandarin-character handwriting recognition solutions, which allow the elderly and kids to enjoy technology by just scribbling on the panels.
[Liu developed the world’s first computerized Mandarin-character handwriting recognition technology in 1985, then founded Hanvon in 1998 and the company became the first Chinese IT firm to license technology to Microsoft Corp the same year.]
The market in China is huge and there won’t be only one player. We have over 40 e-reader brands and the competition helps us stay competitive. What Acer lacks in digital content is complemented by Founder’s resources.
TT: The market is now split into two segments: e-readers and tablet devices. Some say tablets will cannibalize the e-reader segment. What is your take on this, especially since Hanvon just debuted its first tablet — the TouchPad — late last month?
Liu: These two products share a similarity: They are both tablet devices, but use different panels. The major difference is that an e-reader is more for stationary use, such as flipping through newspapers and magazines, and uses less battery power. Tablets consume more power, but have color screens with more PC-like features. In the future, e-paper displays will be in color, while TFT panels used in tablets will consume less battery power. Both could merge into a single device over the next three years.
…
TT: How would you define your relationship with Taiwanese manufacturers?
Liu: We realized that when it comes product design, Taiwanese manufacturers are the cream of the crop. Hanvon isn’t strong in manufacturing and if we want to churn out products that have world-class quality, then we need to work with world-class companies. I started to pay aggressive visits to Taiwanese manufacturers in the second half of last year, looking for suitable partners. There are a slew of sleek products that we will introduce later this year and they are designed by Taiwanese firms. Also, we are currently talking to Book11.com for e-content and plan to bring in our e-reader and TouchPad to Taiwan in the second half.
China Hanvon Technology, the world’s second-largest e-reader manufacturers as well as the world’s leading technology supplier of handwriting recognition, optical character recognition and biometrics identification sets up an overseas marketing platform in Taiwan today to expand overseas markets. Hanvon also announces that all its four major product lines Ebook readers (including the latest six-inch touch-screen Ebook N620 with handwriting recognition and WiFi launched simultaneously in mainland China), Tablet PCs, Graphic Tablets and Face Recognitions Products will be available in Taiwan. Hanvon Technology will also cooperate with the digital publishers in Taiwan on the establishment a cross-strait publishing cooperation platform to support the distribution of Taiwan’s Traditional Chinese publication in mainland China and further expand the market of Chinese publication. Attaching importance to Taiwan market, Hanvon Technology today invites dozens of partners in Taiwan such as technology companies, distributors and digital publishers to attend the news conference. Hanvon Technology hopes the establishment of overseas marketing platform in Taiwan is an opportunity to Chinese digital publishers across the strait to collaborate on spreading Chinese culture and starting a new era of Chinese reading!
Hanvon to launch Taiwan subsidiary [Sept 8]
… it will have a workforce of 70 to 80 carrying out research and development, as well as sales, said Chen Shaoqiang (陳少強), president of Hanvon’s resources management division.
The commencement of local operations will also include the debut of its online bookstore, which will allow owners of Hanvon e-readers to download books onto their devices
…
To meet shipment goals, Hanvon has outsourced production to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), Pegatron Corp (和碩), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Clevo Co (藍天電腦).
Part IV. Hanvon’s Microsoft and Intel cooperation
[FPD 2010] Hanvon’s Triton Powered Color e-Reader “WISEreader” hands-on [Nov 12]
Available in Pre-order in China, Hanvon’s latest e-Reader is according to the company the world first Color e-book reader. Name “WISEreader” this new e-Reader comes with a 9.68” Screen from E INK Triton technology, display 4096 colors, comes with Hanvon Digital Touch screen technology, runs on Windows CE 6.0 a Freescale CPU, has 2GB of RAM and support MicroSD Cards up to 32GB.
Other spec includes a 2350mAh Li-Ion Battery, Wi-Fi B/G as well as several WAN Options including TD, EVDO and WCDMA.
Finally the WISEreader support TXT Files as well as HTML, HTXT, PDF, CEB, DOC, XLS, PPT, EPUB, HEB, HEC, JPG, BMP, TIF, GIF, MP3, WAV and WMA.
We had some quality time with this little marvel and honestly the screen is quite good and the overall reader was responsive. With a nice 9.68 screen capable to rotate on landscape mode, the WISEreader is a pretty descent device. Capable to support some basic little games, it make us which to be in China just right now to grab one.
http://www.hanvon.com/en/products/ebook/index.html
6 inches
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5 inches
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| WinCE:· File Formats: – Text: TXT, HTXT, HTML, PDF, EPUB, DOC, XLS – Image: JPG, TIF, BMP, PNG, GIF – DRM: Adobe content management 4· Digital Audio Formats: WAV, WMA, MP3 |
WinCE 5.0:· Supported Digital Audio Standards: WAV, MP3· Reader: – TEXT: TXT, HTXT, HTML, PDF, EPUB, CHM, Mobi/FB2/(not available yet) – Image: JPG, TIF, BMP, PNG, GIF · Office: Microsoft® Word, EXCEL, PPT (not available yet) |
Linux:
· File Formats:
– Text: TXT, HTXT, HTML, PDF, EPUB
– Image: JPG, TIF, BMP, PNG, GIF,CHM
– DRM: Adobe content management 4
· Digital Audio Formats: WMA, MP3
Hanvon Ebook Readers [March]
… if you want handwriting recongnition incorporated into a reading device Hanvon has to be first choice. This is a key part of their work for over two decades, and something at which they do excel. …
Hanvon WiSEreader N618 at Microsoft booth on COMPUTEX Taipei 2010 [June 6]
Microsoft invites Hanvon to take participate in Microsoft booth in COMPUTEX Taipei (#L108). On 1st of June, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, OEM, Mr. Steven Guggenheimer introduces Hanvon to Microsoft media that Hanvon is a very important partner of Microsoft Window Embedded [because of Windows CE, see above], and that Hanvon comes from Beijing, which is a very magnificent media exposure for Hanvon brand.
Hanvon Invites Taiwan Peers to Jointly Enter Global E-book Reader Market [June 2]
Hanvon today unveiled an array of new products at the Computex Taipei 2010, including Touchpad B10 (tablet PC), WISEreader N618 (e-book reader), and Art Master Ⅲ(graphics tablet).
…
- TouchPad B10
Hanvon, Microsoft, and Intel jointly launched TouchPad B10 for business people. Also called the “iPad Killer” by the market, TouchPad has a trendy look and various practical features. With a weight around 990g and thickness of only 18mm, the stylish and light-weighted Touchpad is easy to carry. In addition, TouchPad supports VGA resolution of 1024×600 (16:9) and is equipped with a 2GB DDR2 memory and 250GB hard drive and therefore it makes video and audio files easy to read and write. With Windows7 pre-installed operating system, 2 USB ports, audio in/out, mini HDMI, TouchPad is a perfect trendy and handy product for consumers to use.
- WISEreader N618
WISEreader N618 is Hanvon’s first ebook reader equipped with built-in WiFi, which allows users to read ebooks via wireless web. It is a business type e-Book reader, equipped with a 6-inch E-Ink large screen and document editing/management software which supports multi-format files. Using Hanvon’s latest handwriting recognition technology and electromagnetic plate technology, WISEreader N618 is a more convenient tool compared to traditional notebooks for users as they can enjoy the dual touch screen features through gesture and handwriting recognition. WISEreader N618 is therefore a great companion for business and travel.
Hanvon B10 Win7 tablet goes on sale, gets video unboxing [Aug 25]
Hanvon Touchpad B10 tablet computer at CES China [July 12]
… new Touchpad B10 [linking to Hanvon’s product page] tablet computer. The 9.96 x 6.61 x 0.70 inch, 1.98 pound device is powered by a 1.3GHz ULV 743 Celeron processor and GMA X4500 display chip from Intel on a GS45 chipset with 2GB DDR2 memory and a 250GB hard disk drive.
Intel Shares Vision for the Future [April 13]
Also, Perlmutter disclosed that Intel is working with PC manufacturers Tongfang* and Hanvon* to introduce the new convertible classmate PC design that combines aesthetics with ruggedness, full PC functionality with enhanced e-reading capabilities and improved performance with energy efficiency. The flexible design of the new convertible classmate PC works and moves the way students do. The tablet touch screen form factor also adds additional functionality for students. Development of these new features was based on extensive ethnographic research with students and teachers.
Rugged Convertible Classmate PC Design Moves the Way Kids Do [April 26]
Intel Corporation today unveiled the most flexible and durable Intel-powered convertible classmate PC reference design yet.
PRESS KIT – The Intel-powered classmate PC: Photos
The new convertible classmate PC design converts instantly from a clamshell to a tablet mode with a touch screen, featuring a built-in camera that will swivel for 180 degrees while retaining its kids-friendly design. Features of the platform are designed for more mobility, flexibly and collaboration in students’ learning. The convertible design will coexist with the Intel-powered clamshell classmate PC for varying education needs in the world.
Pegatron lands orders for tablet PCs from China-based Hanvon [12 Nov]:
Hanvon has extended its own-brand business operation from e-book readers to tablet PCs and has launched a few business-use models including Touchpad B10 and B20 in the China market, the sources indicated.
Hanvon’s executives earlier came to Taiwan to seek ODM partners for its tablet PCs, with First International Computer, Clevo, Quanta Computer and Wistron regarded as candidates, the sources pointed out. Hanvon originally selected Clevo, but Clevo gave up the opportunity because Hanvon asked for too low prices, the sources indicated. Finally, Pegatron won by quoting the lowest, the sources noted.
China market: Hanvon to launch TouchPad B10 tablet PC in January [Dec 17]
China-based Hanvon Technology will begin to market its first Windows 7-based tablet PC, the TouchPad B10, in the China market in January 2011. Hanvon is currently outsourcing production of the TouchPad 10, which is powered by an Intel N455 processor, to Taiwan-based First International Computer (FIC).
FIC began shipping the TouchPad B10 in December and volume shipments will be maintained at 2,000-4,000 units a month initially. However, total monthly shipments are likely to reach 10,000-15,000 units when Hanvon launches Android-based products in the second quarter of 2011, according to industry sources.
More information:
Undermining E-Ink and single-purpose E-readers [Aug 23 – Nov 10]: a comprehensive report about the massive FUD generated by competitive forces a few months back. Has been successfully beaten back.
This Ink Is for Reading [July 1]: all you need to know about E-Ink Holdings (that times called Prime View International)
somewhat older information of the similar kind:
By the Book [Jan 8]
Taiwan firm spreads out e-paper magic [Jan 2]
Prime View and E-Book Readers: A New Page in Reading History [July 21, 2009]
Treesaver: an HTML[5], Javascript and CSS based universal platform for dynamic publications on the web
The overal initiative ended as you could see from below:A big move for me [Roger Black, May 10, 2013] (the last post on his blog)
Nomad is dead as of June 11, 2012???: https://twitter.com/nomadeditions As of Oct 17, 2013: https://github.com/Treesaver/treesaver/releases
Home · Treesaver/treesaver Wiki · GitHub [Last edited by Andrea Campi, Oct 21, 2012]
As of Oct 17, 2013: Filipe Fortes [Linked in]
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Update: SAVORY IS UP! [Savory blog, Sept 5, 2012]
Well, here it is. Savory. The new platform for digital publishing. It’s built with Treesaver®, the rule-based HMTL5 responsive and algorithmic layout engine, and managed by a powerful CMS from ZephirWorks.
Savory is a new kind of web hosting service. Its page-based design is tuned for publications—regular collections of stories by different writers, photographers and artists. Savory puts the narrative first. It’s like a tablet-smartphone magazine app meets a blog hosting service.
Unlike apps, it’s on the web. The same Savory publication can be read on a phone, a laptop, a tablet—on any device that has a browser. You can share stories on the social networks, or e-mail links to friends.
Savory goes beyond the linear story river of blogs, which are fine for short iterative items and links, but not for an issue filled with different kinds of stories.
And it’s better for publications than a conventional web site. (Have you ever used a magazine or newspaper web site that is as immersive and easy to read as the printed edition?)
Monthly service is an affordable $49, or €49. This is great for start-ups—or for new efforts at established publishing companies. The fee is charged monthly like a subscription, but there’s no contract.
At launch there are two complete design themes—one for magazines, and one for news publications. More features, and new themes will be introduced in coming months.
So check it out. Savory is ready to serve your publication. We look forward to working with you.
and here is a sample publication (click on the link or the below image to check for yourself):
Treesaver finally became commercialised? I hope so!
End of the update
The http://treesaver.net/ site became “real” on Jan 25, 2011 with the above image on its home screen and with the below “Welcome!” text:
Design for reading
Treesaver is made for people who like to read. It’s a platform for narrative experiences— with text and pictures and video. Treesaver divides content into pages, automatically adjusting the layout to the size of the screen. Almost any screen.
Treesaver works on any device that has a web browser: Desktop PC or Mac, notebook, netbook, iPad and iPhone, Android and other smartphones and tablets. It’s produced with web standards—HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You can even embed video or Flash in it, just as you can with any web site. There is no app to download. No plug-in to install.
The above image is in fact showing the Top Stories (Top Headlines) section of the real-time news feeds from the Associated Press in a significantly more readable form. As a current [Feb 1, 2011, 8:15 AM GMT] content here is the Top News part of the Technology section as seen via Treesaver on a 22″ monitor (only the essential content page is shown here, not the whole screen — see more on that further below when the complete reading experience in this given case is discussed):
as well as via the particular Associated Press site (the essential source) at the same time:
AP Top Technology News At 8:36 p.m. EST
Baidu net income surges in 4th quarter
NEW YORK (AP) — Baidu.com Inc., which operates China’s leading search engine, said Monday that its fourth-quarter profit more than tripled to surpass Wall Street expectations, sending shares higher in after-hours trading….Oracle to pay $46M to settle kickbacks charges
WASHINGTON (AP) — Oracle Corp. has agreed to pay $46 million to settle a lawsuit over alleged kickbacks to win government work….Stimulus funds help wire rural homes for Internet
EAST BURKE, Vt. (AP) — Up in rural northern Vermont, it took until the 1960s to run power lines to some towns – decades after the rest of America got turned on….Last Internet provider in Egypt goes dark
SEATTLE (AP) — The last of Egypt’s main Internet service providers, the Noor Group, has gone dark….In future, cars might decide if driver is drunk
WALTHAM, Mass. (AP) — An alcohol-detection prototype that uses automatic sensors to instantly gauge a driver’s fitness to be on the road has the potential to save thousands of lives, but could be as long as a decade away from everyday use in cars, federal officials and researchers said Friday….Toshiba returns to black on smartphone chip demand
TOKYO (AP) — Toshiba Corp. said Monday it returned to the black in the October-December quarter thanks to robust global demand for the flash memory chips used in digital cameras and smartphones….Internet cutoff fails to silence Egypt protests
NEW YORK (AP) — In its effort to silence protesters, Egypt took a step that’s rare even among authoritarian governments: It cut off the Internet across the entire country….Technology cos. commit funds to Obama program
NEW YORK (AP) — Three of the nation’s biggest technology companies are committing hundreds of millions of dollars to an initiative backed by President Barack Obama to encourage job creation and economic growth by supporting small businesses….The day part of the Internet died: Egypt goes dark
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — About a half-hour past midnight Friday morning in Egypt, the Internet went dead….Comcast takes control of NBC Universal
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The nation’s largest cable TV company, Comcast Corp., took control of NBC Universal after the government shackled its behavior in the coming years to protect online video services such as Netflix and Hulu….
You can compare the readability difference in the two presentations very easily for yourself. When going into the news items themselves the difference is becoming even bigger.
FYI: some of the news are coming to AP news feeds even from blog posts (like the Last Internet provider in Egypt goes dark) on one extreme, while some others as articles requiring many pages (even on a large monitor) and from one or more AP writers on the other extreme (like the Internet cutoff fails to silence Egypt protests in addition to two others shown on the Top News part of the Treesaver presentation via expressive images), with the rest in between. The AP written articles have a sufficiently large collection of media files on their feeds as well (see the complete feed content for the “In future, cars might decide if driver is drunk” article as an example).
Here is the first page of the 3 page (on a 22″ monitor!) “Internet cutoff fails to silence Egypt protests” article as seen on the screen of the monitor:
On this screen image you can also recognize the complete reading experience developed by the designer (i.e. what has been custom built for this particular publication on top of the Treesaver platform): there is a section list on the left, then adjacent pages are also shown on the left and right from the actual page, and finally there is a numbering scheme for the currently visible page of the article as well as a Menu on the bottom part.
[The content of the original Dec 20, 2010 post is coming below with siginificant updates as of Jan 30, 2011] On line journalists in US are already well aware of this revolutionary and high-quality platform, and we have as well two publishers using it. Moreover the Treesaver [“real” site from Jan 25, 2011] software is going to be released as an open-source in the 2nd week of January 2011 “end of next week”, i.e. Feb 4, 2011 (see Filipe Fortes’ response [Jan 28, 2011]), so more and more people will be able to reap the benefits as well as enhance the platform further. What Microsoft was able to achieve first time for The New York Times in 2006 (the so called Times Reader) with a platform specific technology called WPF is now made possible through the current crop of web HTML/HTML5, Javascript and CSS technologies masterfully applied in the publishing platform called Treesaver from the namesake US start-up. Moreover this is the first time we have the possibility to publish to the web in a true print quality without any applications needed to read the content. This is making the publishing/consuming process significantly simpler and more natural.
Want to experience? Go to http://www.publicintegrity.org/treesaver/tuna/ to see the first publication called “Looting the Seas” [Nov 7] from The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Change the size of your browser’s window to experience the adaptability if you are using a desktop, a notebook, or a netbook, and go to the same URL on your smartphone’s browser to have an experience of universality as well. You can also use different browsers, down to the old Internet Explore 6 (although in this case you will have traditional web page quality only since that browser has no more capabilities than that) even in the Internet Explorer range alone, as well as different smartphones (with different resolutions etc.).
There are two other reports have been published in Treesaver from ICIJ as well:
– Smoke Screen: Multinational Tobacco Firms Target Smoking Controls in Developing Countries [Nov 16]
– The Truth Left Behind: Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl [Jan 20, 2011]
The most important thing to understand from these first experiences is how much the design behind these reports was helping the flow of a story to grab and keep the reader’s attention. Treesaver as a presentation technology has made extremely simple for the reporters and journalists to submit their content while the designer of the publication has been put into an almost exclusive role of assuring how to grab and keep the reader’s attention for all types of publications of similar kind of storyboards — in the case of the above ICIJ reports the chosen investigative character of all the publications of similar kind, so called long-form investigative journalism, a 5,000-word piece . This also means that there is no per story web design as such but everything is designed well ahead for the kind of stories to be included into each issue and the whole publication as well. (To compare this with the usual pactice see — for example — Jane Stevens’ tutorial section on Assembling Your Story [Jan 19, 2011] from the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism).
The technology part
Information about the technology is after the launch team part of the http://treesaver.net/about/ page (more technology releated / availability infomation on Filippe Fortes’ http://treesaverjs.com/ site). From this the most important thing is:
CMS & Web Server Requirements
Because Treesaver’s layout intelligence runs on the user’s browser, there are no special requirements for any server that wishes to host Treesaver content. The Treesaver Javascript files are small (under 50K total) and can be served from any static host.
Treesaver’s native content format is HTML, and all layout is done through a combination of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Here is an example of the HTML required for a minimal Treesaver article:
<!doctype html> <html> <head> <title>Treesaver Sample</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="treesaver.js"></script> </head> <body> <article> <p>The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.</p> <p>The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.</p> <p>The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.</p> </article> </body> </html>Treesaver has minimal base requirements for formatting content. In the example above, the entire article consists of three paragraph tags. Treesaver imposes a few requirements, one of which is that all article content must be contained within an
<article>tag (any content outside the tag will be ignored).Because all of Treesaver’s formatting is handled by JavaScript code, integrating Treesaver with a Content Management System (CMS) is relatively straightforward. We have handled the integrations quickly.
Multiple Image Sizes
An image with multiple fixed sizes
Multiple image sizes are used by Treesaver’s sophisticated layout algorithims in order to take full advantage of the user’s screen real estate. Desktop users do not have to settle for tiny images that lack detail, and mobile users are not stuck waiting for huge images to download.
A typical Treesaver site might use four or five image sizes:
- Thumbnail (e.g. 80px wide)
- Single Column (e.g. 300px wide)
- Two Column (e.g. 600px wide)
- Three Column (e.g. 900px wide)
- Four Column (e.g. 1200px wide)
Obviously, the exact number and dimensions of the crops vary per design. Most CMSes already create multiple versions of each image, and adding the required sizes does not require much effort.
Windows 7 slates with a personal cloud based layered interface for touch-first HTML5 applications on the CES 2011
Microsoft to Announce New Slates Aimed at the iPad [Dec 13]:
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, is expected to announce a number of these devices when he takes the stage at C.E.S., showcasing devices built by Samsung and Dell, among a number of other manufacturing partners.
…
The Samsung device is described as “similar in size and shape to the Apple iPad, although it is not as thin. It also includes a unique and slick keyboard that slides out from below for easy typing.”
The people familiar with this device said it would run the Windows 7 operating system [user interface] when in landscape mode, but will also have a layered interface that will appear when the keyboard is hidden and the device is held in a portrait mode.
…
… the company was encouraging partners to build applications for these devices that use HTML5, the Web programming language. … the applications would not be sold in an app store, as with the Apple iTunes model, but Microsoft will encourage software partners to host the applications on their own Web sites, which will then be highlighted in a search interface on the slate computers.
Update: While the above Samsung device was indeed introduced at CES 2011, under the name of Sliding PC 7 Series and even in a very prominent position in the Microsoft keynote, the layered interface wasn’t. See my post Microsoft moving to SoC & screen level slot management that is not understood by analysts/observers at all [Jan 7, 2011]. Regarding the rumored layered interface I wrote the following in the notes section of that article:
… the fact that HTML5 related announcements (as was anticipated in my previous post of Windows 7 slates with a personal cloud based layered interface for touch-first HTML5 applications on the CES 2011 [Dec 14, 2010] post) were postponed has even much bigger significance. Whatever will come regarding that upto the MIX 2011 of April 12-14 will be equally important to clarify the rest of the new strategic Microsoft picture. Particularly I am expecting that Silverlight technologies will nicely join the already known IE9/HTML5 push in a new platform technology setup.
The Dec 13 report from The New York Times indicated in the beginning has been widely quoted and analyzed over the web. Some of the most notable ones:
Microsoft to demo new slate PCs, Windows 8 tablet functionality at CES? [Dec 13]
Microsoft to show off true iPad competitors at CES? [Dec 13]
Microsoft iPad challengers surfacing in January [Dec 13]
Curious timing: Goldman Sachs issues another report saying the iPad and tablets are hammering Microsoft, then anonymous sources tell the New York Times that Windows 7 tablets are part of Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote.
…
An appearance at CES doesn’t mean the devices will go on sale in January. The show is really for retailers to see products that they’ll carry later in 2011.
Microsoft will show off new Windows 7 Slates at CES, no Windows 8 [Dec 14]
The New York Times suggests that Ballmer may show off a Windows 8 based Slate but WinRumors understands this is not the case. The software maker may show off a future Tablet/Slate concept device but will not refer to Windows 8 specifically. Microsoft is currently in the planning and preperation stage for Windows 8 and is compiling early milestone builds for product functionality.
Regarding Windows 8 there is a couple of days earlier report New Windows 8 user interface codenamed ‘Wind’? [Dec 8]:
Windows 8 will have two separate interfaces according to recent rumors.
Italian based windows8italia reports that Microsoft’s next-generation Windows operating system will be 32-bit and 64-bit with two separate interfaces. Windows8italia says that the main interface will be codenamed “Wind” and will initially only be supported by high-end notebook and desktop PCs with dedicated video cards. The site claims the interface will require around 170MB of video memory. “Wind” will only activate on 64-bit copies of Windows 8 and will be fully 3D.
The site goes on to explain that Wind will be “fully dynamic” and able to adapt to user habits. Icons and shortcuts will adapt to different usage scenarios to speed up daily tasks. Windows 8 is also rumored to include a new fast hibernation system. The system will hibernate in around three to six seconds and save all open documents and running tasks.
My earlier trendtracking has shown the following:
Windows slates in the coming months? Not much seen yet [July 13 – Oct 9] with the last relevant update stating:
Mr. Ballmer is now (Oct) talking consistently about “next year”: How Steve Ballmer told me what to do with my iPad! [Oct 6].
At the same time on my another website there is a very important in this regard Windows 7 UI overlays from Microsoft and elsewhere [Aug 28] article:
Microsoft Surfboard
This is a prototype application shown in the Brad Brooks demo part during Steve Ballmer’s session at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2010. This part is called “Chapter 11 – Windows 7 + Personal Cloud” and it is 18:27 long. The related section is close to the end, and the story told to us is the following (the emphasis is mine):
Now I want to show you something we think is going to be very compelling around consuming content across your personal cloud and with a device or form factor like … a slate. So, here I’ve got another slate form factor and again running Windows 7 and I’m going to pop open an application here that we’ve been, this is a prototype application we’ve been working with at Microsoft and using to help train our ecosystem about how to create touch-first application on Windows 7. And so this particular application is what we call internally Surfboard. I’m going to go ahead and open up the music session, and remember that song that I downloaded off Bing? Well now, if I go to Z, it actually shows up here, because it is on a connected PC across my personal cloud and this PC can now see this and use it across the personal cloud.
So, this Onkyo device that I had in my home, well, I can go ahead now and take this content off my personal cloud and I can move it right up to that Onkyo device and because that Onkyo device is connected through into my personal cloud with Windows 7, I can now take and take that music and play it across my PC through this Windows ‑‑ from Windows 7 PC into this device. But, I can take it much farther.
So, why don’t I go ahead and go into videos here. And go ahead and say that my wife ‑‑ we’re planning a Hawaiian vacation later on this year. I want to go ahead and get her excited about that. I’ll take this Hawaiian surf video and I’ll play it off to the Xbox over in the den. So, again, through one PC interface I can start controlling that experience in a different part of the house through wireless network and my personal cloud. Now, let’s say my wife wants to go ahead and set the kids up in the den and she wants to move to the main TV, I can take that right off the Xbox and move it right over to the main TV that’s connected up to my Western Digital box. And I want to take the kids and take children’s program that I recorded on that media center PC over there, and I want to take it off and I want to push it over to the Xbox in the den, so they can start watching it there.
Meanwhile, Ryan went and sent me a video of what he is doing over the weekend, which is being mascot for the Seattle Seahawks. I can pull that to the Media Center PC. So, now there you have it is I’ve now got this portable remote control device that is my slate PC that is now collected across my personal cloud. This is really going to change how people think about experiences and what they are doing with a Windows 7 PC, plus a personal cloud.
So what Microsoft is developing is not a UI overlay on top of a single slate device, like what we have with Apple iPad, but over an entirely different concept they are calling “personal cloud”, of which the Windows 7 slate is just one part. In the very beginning of his presentation Brad Books is describing the concept as follows (the emphasis is again mine):
Speaking of cloud and Windows, we have a unique point of view on the cloud for consumers, and we call it the PC. Only in this case we call it the personal cloud. And the personal cloud, well, it’s going to connect all the things that are important to you and make them available and ready for you to use wherever you’re at, whenever you need it. That’s going to be our promise to consumers. And it’s going to be centered around you, because we don’t believe around here that one size fits all. We believe in choice and we believe that you’ve got to bring that together in a lot of different ways for customers.
But the personal cloud … is going to do a lot more than just connect your Windows 7 PCs together. It’s going to connect you to your entertainment choices and bring new content into your personal cloud. It’s going to connect you to the people that matter to you most. And of course it is going to connect to different devices that you want it to connect to, like devices in the homes or ones you might carry in your pocket. And we are going to take this already super popular Windows 7 PC experience and make it even more compelling for consumers and deliver it on a scale that Microsoft can deliver it on. So starting this fall, the things I’m about to show you, this personal cloud delivered through a Windows Live update that will be coming, will be available to every existing Windows 7 PC user and every Windows Phone 7 user. And by Q3 a vast majority of all PCs that ship to consumers will have this pre-installed so people will have this personal cloud experience as part of their Windows 7 experience right out of the box, and of course that will come with every Windows Phone 7 as well.
Meantime the service part of that personal cloud was introduced, see my WHAT? … Windows Live Spaces SaaS moving to WordPress.com SaaS? … It is part of a NEW strategy with Windows Live Essentials 2011 released now! [Oct 2] post regarding that. We also have the Office add-on to that, see my Microsoft Office 365 SaaS (now in limited Beta) [Oct 20] post regarding that. Also these are essential parts of well thought-out overall strategy, so called “three screens and a cloud”, see my Microsoft (Ray Ozzie, Steve Ballmer) on the cloud clients [Oct 9] post.
So what Microsoft could indeed introduce as an overlay software on Windows 7 slates when they are operated without a keyboard is a personal cloud based new interface optimized for touch (over the traditional Windows 7 interface). This is only which still missing.
Regarding the HTML5 rumor there is also nothing essentially new since it could have been noted earlier as per my existing posts on this website:
Microsoft going multiplatform? [Sept 17]
Microsoft to lead standards compliance and implementation? … or how Microsoft is aiming to create a radically new Windows client platform via a set of “whole computer capable rich web” standards. [Sept 20]
Split strategy for HTML 5 and Windows only enhanced development from Microsoft [Dec 3]
And regarding the dependency of Windows slates on Intel SoC advancements there were clear posts here as well:
Intel SoC for Cloud Clients [June 27]
Windows 7 tablets/slates with Oak Trail Atom SoC in December [Nov 1]
Intel Oak Trail to beat ARM with MeeGo specific prices [Nov 25]
Intel’s industry position and prospects for years ahead [Dec 9]
So by CES 2011 time (January 6-9, 20011) everything will be ready to launch a truely competitive Windows 7 slate strategy. And one look at the program shows that Microsoft will quite probably be THE major keynoter with (emphasis is mine):
Steve Ballmer will kick off the 2011 International CES with a preshow keynote address at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 5, in the Las Vegas Hilton Center. In previous years, Microsoft has used the CES keynote stage to launch major products including Xbox, Windows Vista and its Sync technology partnership with Ford.
(Note: a year ago, as always, Ballmer was also a preshow keynoter. Let’s hope this time his keynote will indeed have a major industry impact since tooo many people are using Microsoft legacy client solutions which indeed urgently need a strategic update for the fast emerging cloud clients environment.)
