If the Apple tablet emerges as expected, this will be another big device market, following media players and smartphones, that the PC industry cedes to Apple.
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Tablet: Is this the best WinTel-HP can do?
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)The writing is already on the wall already for Microsoft and smartphones, as spelled out in a previous post and as documented in shrinking market share numbers.
That's not to say that Microsoft, Compaq (later Hewlett-Packard), and Intel didn't have a chance. Remember the Compaq iPAQ PDA that debuted way back in 2000, powered by an Intel StrongARM chip running an early version of Windows Mobile?
That device had a lot of potential. The operative word being "potential." An iPAQ could have been an iPhone. Or at the very least an iPod. And everybody could be drooling over iPAQs today instead of iPhones. Or using iPAQs instead of BlackBerrys. But of course things didn't turn out that way.
Fast forward to 2010 (January?). Apple announces a tablet and suddenly everyone wants a tablet. (Or iSlate, if you will.)
Whatever happened to this Intel-powered Asus MID?
(Credit: Asus)And what have Microsoft, Intel, HP, and others been offering in the interim years when they had every opportunity to come out with a blockbuster tablet? Unattractive, bulky, half-baked convertible laptops that, let's put it this way, have not taken the PC market by storm.
So, here's the $64,000 question, uh, make that the $64 billion question. Why can't the combined R&D smarts, market clout, and overall technological resources of Microsoft-Intel-HP-Dell come up with a thin, sexy compelling tablet and/or media pad that will turn heads and convince the unbelievers (the average why-would-I-need-something-like-that consumer) that a tablet is a must-have product?
Answer: Because Apple will.
Here's a not unlikely scenario. Apple brings out the tablet/media pad, wows U.S. (and world?) consumers, sells a ton of units, Microsoft-Intel-HP-Dell follow suit with slavishly copied devices that don't sell very well comparatively.
iPAQ PDAs: Missed opportunity?
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)That's how the market for successful newfangled devices works these days. Apple creates the market and everyone else follows in a panic.
Then there's the Intel factor. Intel also wants to be a player in this space. But Intel and its coterie of PC makers can't get off the traditional-design laptop gravy train. Plus, as formidable a chipmaker as Intel is, it is still behind the Qualcomms and Texas Instruments of the world in building the power-efficient system-on-a-chip silicon that goes into smartphones and will likely go into tablets.
So, here's my question for Intel et al: How many people will be buying Netbooks or Intel-based MIDs (mobile Internet devices) in 2011 if Apple has a more compelling alternative? Answer: a lot less if the Apple tablet exists.
OLPC tablet concept: Can't a PC maker do this?
(Credit: OLPC)And add Asia-based device makers offering tablets using an Nvidia Tegra 2 chip to that. A number of these tablets are expected too in 2010. In fact, Nvidia is already doing what Intel should have finished doing a long time ago: make a competitive system-on-a-chip that powers small devices. Intel had the chance to make XScale (what StrongARM eventually became) into something big for small devices six years ago. But it didn't. And now Intel is trying to reinvent the wheel by squeezing the upcoming "Moorestown" Atom chip into smartphones.
Intel, I'm sure you think Moorestown is a great idea, but it's a little late. Apple beat you to it by about three years.
On a recent trip to the California desert, with access to both a BlackBerry Storm and an iPhone 3GS, I had a chance to test Verizon's vaunted claims about better coverage.
Anza Borrego Desert State Park, about two hours south of Palm Springs by car, is California's largest state park and covers roughly 1,000 square miles of desert. In other words, it's mostly raw, but stunningly beautiful, wilderness. Over the years, I have often made day trips (alone or with friends/family) to boulder up washes in the surrounding mountains (see photo).
Anza Borrego Desert State Park: looking east towards the Salton Sea: good coverage even here.
(Credit: Brooke Crothers)The largest town in the area, Borrego Springs (the 2000 census put the population at about 2,500), is famous for having rock-solid 2G (and increasingly 3G) coverage for most major carriers. In fact, in the spot shown in the photo (embedded in this post), which was taken after an hour of bouldering up a wash just west of Borrego Springs, there is no hiccup in service.
But Borrego Springs, surrounded by a desert (figuratively) of dead zones, is the exception. Outside of town, in places like the outback of Coyote Canyon or in the desert east of the Shelter Valley area (part of Julian, Calif.), it's very hit or miss. ... Read more
The quality and speed of the browser is an essential feature for smartphones these days. And it's here that the BlackBerry Storm 2 has some catching up to do vis-a-vis rivals such as the iPhone 3GS.
The Storm 2 is an underrated smartphone in many respects. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, the standard software feature set competitive, and the ability to integrate all email accounts into one screen convenient.
But unbelievably--to me, at least--RIM failed to improve the browser on the Storm 2. Or let me put it this way: RIM failed to make perceptible improvements. (See RIM statement below.)
This is no small oversight. The key reason why the Motorola Droid has been a hit is because it couples a big screen with a high-quality, fast browser--making it the only premium smartphone to date in the U.S. to approach the status of the iPhone.
Which brings us to the gold standard of smartphone browsers: the Safari browser on the iPhone 3GS. This is nothing short of phenomenal. It's the closest a smartphone user can get to the full-fledged browsing on a laptop.
And the browser will only become more important as the smartphone screen size creep continues, from the 3.5-inch diagonal screen on the iPhone 3GS to the 3.7-inch screen on the Droid to the 4.1-inch display on the Toshiba TG01 (sold in Europe).
So, what was RIM thinking? The Storm 2's browser (like its predecessor's--which I had previously been using) can be glacially slow when loading Web sites. So slow that many Storm users opt for downloading the Opera Mini or Bolt browsers. But these browsers have shortcomings of their own, so they don't necessarily serve as satisfactory replacements for the Storm's built-in browser. (The Bolt browser does not zoom and Opera Mini--though blazingly fast--has trouble rendering some Web sites.)
As shown in the embedded videos, which demonstrate the load times for the CNET News page and the zoom features of the two phones, respectively, the iPhone 3GS (bottom) beats the Storm handily.
It is important to note that the Storm 2's built-in browser will speed up significantly if you turn off (uncheck) "Support javascript" in the "Browser Configuration" settings. And in the side-by-side page load-time comparisons with the iPhone 3GS (embedded videos), support for javascript is turned off.
But RIM needs to hurry up and match the competition. A fast, high-quality browser is ... Read more
The Federal Trade Commission needs to do a better study of Intel and chip the market before it pulls the trigger with a veritable scattershot of last-minute accusations.
In addition to the FTC's litany of charges against Intel relating to the chipmaker's alleged anticompetitive behavior in the central processing unit, or CPU, market for PCs, the FTC document also refers to "Intel's unfair methods of competition...and future competition in the relevant GPU (market)." GPUs, or graphics processing units, and CPUs comprise the two main processors in all PCs.
A more thoughtful, studied, and contemporaneous analysis by the FTC would reveal that future personal computing markets are not so much about graphics chips--which is the basis of its new found emphasis on Nvidia as the object of Intel bullying and misbehavior--but about small mobile devices. And here Intel faces a raft of competition and is at least a year behind its rivals.
And that includes Nvidia, whose tiny Tegra processor is already in the Microsoft Zune HD and the Samsung M1 and whose next-generation Tegra 2 chip will be in dozens more handheld devices and smartphones. Intel's current offerings in this space? Zero.
Nvidia's Tegra processor is based on the same ARM design that other competitors use such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Apple, and Freescale Semiconductor use. And which Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said is expected to account for half of Nvidia's business in a few years.
Unbelievably, the only reference to ARM in the FTC complaint is: "Another example of a non-x86 microprocessor architecture is ARM. ARM is used primarily in handheld devices and mobile phones." One sentence in a 20-plus page document seems oddly dismissive, as though ARM was practically irrelevant to future chip market competitive dynamics as relates to Intel. Especially when you look at it in the context that that FTC is referring to the world's most popular consumer chip architecture--that is, ARM.
How large is this exploding market today? The ARM processor market totaled well over 2 billion units shipped in 2008. The "x86" PC chip market, where Intel and Advanced Micro Devices compete, a fraction of this--a few hundred million.
"The growing market is...a whole swath of interconnected devices and Intel doesn't have much a presence there," said the CEO of ARM Warren East in an interview I had with him recently in Los Angeles. And he accurately asserted that ARM can either match or exceed Intel in market clout and spending because it works, to some extent, in concert with the manufacturers--like TI, Nvidia, Samsung--that collectively have a massive revenue stream to tap into for marketing and research and development. "Well, actually there's about $25 billion of ARM semiconductor revenue coming in through the front door. So, it isn't Intel versus ARM, it's Intel versus everybody else," he said.
And if there is any truth to the Google Netbook rumors, ... Read more
The Google phone may use what is probably the fastest smartphone chip on the planet and could become the first non-Windows smartphone to tap into this kind of processing power.
Conspicious among the Google phone's leaked specifications is the Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm. Snapdragon is the first gigahertz-class ARM-based processor to be used in smartphones. (In current implementations, Snapdragon runs at 1GHz.)
The Google phone's Snapdragon processor is one of the fastest smartphone chips.
(Credit: Cory O'Brien via Twitter)And the Google phone (aka, Nexus One) would--if it becomes an actual product--have some interesting company, though both of the rival phones that use the chip are in the Windows Mobile camp: the Toshiba TG01 and HTC HD2.
Interestingly, all of these phones have, relatively speaking, large screens: more than four inches in diagonal size. The Google phone will also add high-resolution (based on an OLED touchscreen) to that.
What's the big picture on all of this? Smartphones are getting larger and more like small tablets (or "media pads"--which is really a more apt description) and their functionality is becoming more akin to personal computers. So, faster processors are necessary (let's not forget Nvidia's Tegra chip or Texas Instrument's OMAP processor) to handle the increasing hardware and software workloads.
Sort of sounds like the old PC mantra. Bigger, better, faster. Bigger storage/memory capacities, better (increasingly sophisticated) operating systems, and faster processors. Which is why Intel is sprinting as fast it can to get its "x86" PC architecture into smartphones. But this market is going to be a hard one to crack for Intel, no matter how much it wows device makers with its technology and marketing clout.
Look no further than Microsoft for proof. Despite its size and status, it is currently losing the smartphone (Windows Mobile) mindshare (and market share) battle to the Apple iPhone. And prospects won't improve with the emergence of devices--such as the Motorola Droid and Google Phone--based on Google's Android operating system, not to mention other popular platforms such as the BlackBerry.
The bottom line is that silicon competition will be varied and vigorous in the smartphone market--unlike the PC space. Which makes the unveiling of every new major smartphone all the more interesting.
Updated on December 15 at 2:20 p.m. PST: adding changes to reflect that it is not yet officially known whether a Google-branded phone would be a commercial product--though a number of reports claim such a phone will be sold next year.
As a German company defends the "Smartbook" trademark, its actions underscore what happens when companies gratuitously heap new category monikers on top of existing--and perfectly adequate--naming schemes.
Smartbook's Heaven Puro is, in fact, a Netbook.
(Credit: Smartbook)Question: what do Netbooks and smartbooks have in common? Besides looking pretty much the same to consumers (small, lightweight clamshell laptops), both terms have been the object of legal wrangling by companies claiming trademark infringement.
First, the term Netbook came under attack from Psion Teklogix. That dispute with Intel was settled in June. Now Germany-based Smartbook is claiming that Qualcomm's use of the term smartbook infringes on the eponymous company's trademark. "Smartbook AG sets a high value on its protected trademarks, which are being used as company symbols and product marks for years," the company said in a statement sent to CNET.
The San Diego, Calif.-based cell phone chip giant had this to say in response: "Qualcomm is surprised by the claims being made by Smartbook AG...given that Qualcomm does not claim, and has never claimed, to own the term 'smartbook,' which it believes is a descriptive and generic term. The term is used by a number of companies, consumers, and industry commentators to describe a class of devices that combine attributes of smartphones and Netbooks that will be enabled by various technology companies, including Qualcomm."
Qualcomm has been promoting smartbooks for months on its Web site, and Freescale Semiconductor has been doing the same, though on a smaller scale. Both companies make, in effect, the silicon engines that power these devices.
And Qualcomm is now starting to crank up its promotion of the smartbook, as Lenovo prepares to roll out one of the first smartbooks at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
So the question arises: why call them smartbooks at all? Qualcomm believes that the devices it is promoting are different enough--as described above--from Netbooks that the moniker is warranted. But the reality is that by the time smartbooks hit the market in force (if they indeed do), there will be little really to set them apart from Netbooks.
For proof, look no further than the local Verizon or AT&T store. Verizon now carries Windows-Intel-based Netbooks from Hewlett-Packard with 3G modems built in. The sales pitch: connect to the Internet anywhere at 3G speeds--similar to what Qualcomm is preaching for smartbooks. Yes, smartbooks will have a different operating system (Android/Linux), but to consumers, this won't mean that they are different. At a Verizon store, it's just another Netbook.
And the Smartbook case is a microcosm of this whole problem. The German company offers a line of laptops that, in the United States, are called Netbooks. The systems promoted on its Web site offer the usual fare of Intel Atom processors and Windows software--except that the company calls them Smartbooks.
Confused? Well, the confusion may go away on its own when everyone just keeps it simple, calling a spade a spade: a Netbook is a Netbook is a Netbook.
ARM on Tuesday announced the launch an alliance of 35 tech companies to support development of Android-based products using its widely used chips.
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ARM-based chips power the world's most popular smartphones, including--in the U.S.--the Apple iPhone, Blackberry Storm, Palm Pre, and Motorola Droid.
The Solution Center for Android alliance will serve as a resource for designers and developers of ARM technology-based products running on the Android operating system, which is the software on the popular Motorola Droid smartphone and Acer Liquid.
In addition to smartphones, Android powers digital picture frames and smartbooks--what the Windows-Intel camp prefers to call Netbooks. ARM-based smartbooks packing processors from Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor, and Texas Instruments should begin to emerge in force at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, where Lenovo, among others, will debut its first-ever smartbook design. The Lenovo smartbook is expected to be sold by AT&T.
"Developers require assurance that the components they are using are up to the task," ARM said in a statement. "Android was written for the ARM architecture and Android 2.0 was launched on high-performance (ARM) Cortex-A processor designs."
ARM says the launch of popular products is putting new pressure on the ecosystem that supports ARM. "As we have seen through the recent launches of handsets such as Motorola's Droid and Acer's Liquid, the Android platform represents a fundamental change in the open source ecosystem," Kevin Smith, VP of segment marketing at ARM, said in a statement.
Smith says that ARM now needs to ensure that development solutions are world-class. "ARM is in a position to foster an innovative ecosystem to ensure that device manufacturers have the best development solutions at their disposal," he said.
Analysts agree. "Consumer adoption of smartbooks, smartphones and other 'always on' connected devices is forecast to increase significantly in the next few years," Jeff Orr, a senior analyst at ABI Research, said in a statement provided by ARM. "Manufacturers of these devices need a support structure that enables them to develop cutting-edge devices quickly and affordably."
ARM said that in addition to the support of major device makers, silicon partners and solution providers, the Solution Center for Android comprises more than 35 members of the ARM community, including Texas Instruments, Mentor Graphics, and Archos.
Updated at 9:30 a.m. PST: Clarifying that "Netbook" is the name that the Windows-Intel camp gives to the small laptops and "smartbook" is the moniker applied by the ARM camp of device makers.
If the iPhone didn't finish off Windows Mobile in the smartphone market, the Motorola Droid may.
Windows Mobile is losing the last vestiges of its mojo--if it really had any to begin with--as the Droid and other phones based on the Android 2.0 operating system push the buzz meter needle into the red zone. Many in the media--which can play a big role in steering users to one technology platform or another--sense that Windows Mobile has now been relegated resolutely to has-been status.
The Motorola Droid's high-resolution screen.
(Credit: Verizon)Let's do a quick canvas of what some in the press are saying now that we're at the start of the Droid era. A post on SFGate.com (the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle) is, like other commentary out there, clearly dismissive of Windows Mobile. "Curiously, Microsoft is nowhere to be seen in this battle royal," the author states, referring to the iPhone and Android.
And there's this more damning comment from a blog at SeattlePI.com. "Rarely mentioned, however, is another player in the mobile OS market--Microsoft. Why not? Because not many people in the smartphone world seem to really give a hoot about Windows Mobile anymore."
The litany of like articles is long. This post on PC World asks: "Has Microsoft Placed Its Last Mobile Bet?" The article cites research from Canalys showing Windows Mobile slipping from 13.9 percent of the worldwide smartphone market in 2002 to 9 percent in the second quarter of 2009.
The numbers are even less favorable in an accounting by ad service Admob, which compiles data on which operating systems are in use on mobile devices that access online ads. In August, according to AdMob, Windows Mobile had only a 4 percent share of the mobile OS market worldwide, down from 7 percent in February.
But getting back to my original premise of no mobile mojo for Windows. The fact is that consumers don't care about Windows on smartphones. In other words, while Windows seems to be a prerequisite for many consumers when buying a PC, it just doesn't come into play in a big way in a smartphone purchase.
This will have ramifications beyond Microsoft of course. Companies like Toshiba (and its attractive TG01 smartphone) will probably not be as successful on Windows Mobile as they would (will) be on Android 2.0. Or, at the very least, will not get the necessary buzz.
Then there's the Intel factor. Intel also wants to be a player, eventually, in the smartphone space. If it is indeed able to beat back Texas Instruments (whose chip is used in the Droid), Samsung (iPhone), Qualcomm (BlackBerry), and Marvell, it probably won't do it by sticking to the tried-and-true "WinTel" combination that's been so outrageously successful in the PC space.
And Intel is chasing a fast-moving target. TI, and all the other ARM-based chip suppliers cited above, are slated to bring out dual-core designs that can hit speeds as high as 2GHz (think next-generation tablets and media pads). In other words, they'll also be able claim the coveted speed mantle on phones, such as the Droid, where Windows Mobile is no where in sight.
So the Droid may not be the iPhone killer but rather the Windows Mobile slayer. Microsoft, of course, will always have the unassailable PC franchise. But, wait, isn't Android coming to Netbooks next year? Maybe the real battle royal for Microsoft is yet to come.
Though the Motorola Droid and Apple iPhone have different chassis, their high-octane engines are similar.
The internal similarities begin with performance: both devices are fast. The iPhone 3GS is already distinguished for its speed. And the Droid is quickly garnering similar accolades.
The Motorola Droid has a radically different exterior compared with the iPhone but uses a speedy Cortex-A8 ARM chip like the Apple phone.
(Credit: CNET Reviews)"The Droid makes a big leap in internal performance. Compared with its rather sluggish Android predecessors," CNET Reviews said, citing the speed at which the Droid opens applications and menus and scrolls through lists and switches display screens.
"We're really pumped to see all the industry excitement it's created," said Jeff Dougan, the OMAP 3 product marketing manager at Texas Instruments, which supplies the OMAP 3430 processor that powers the Droid. "This is the first handset that truly realizes the full potential of Android," he said, referring to Google's Android 2.0 operating system that runs on the Droid phone.
The TI processor, like the one in the iPhone, is based on an a new architecture called Cortex-A8 from U.K.-based chip design house ARM, whose wide variety of chips populate most of the world's cell phones. Dougan says most smartphones currently on the market use an older, lower-performance ARM architecture than the Cortex-A8--with the exception of the Palm Pre, which opted for the newer TI chip. The Cortex-A8 provides a "two to three times performance boost" over older architectures, according to Dougan.
Max Baron, an analyst at Microprocessor Report, says the chips in the Droid and the iPhone (see not below) are so alike that differences are more dependent on the operating systems the two chips use and how successfully each phone maker optimizes the OS. "With chips that have near-similar specs, the optimum OS and the look-and-feel of the user interface may make or break the product," Baron said.
The core of TI's OMAP3 processor.
(Credit: Texas Instruments)"The caveat, however, is that even small differences in chips will surface and become important differentiators as soon as the market forces you to increase the screen size or add more pixels per screen, or execute more power-consuming applications," he added.
The raw MHz ratings on the chips are slightly different. The processor in the iPhone 3GS--which is believed to be based on the Samsung S5PC100 processor--runs at 600MHz, according to most accounts. The Motorola Droid's TI chip is rated at 550MHz though theoretically it can be run as fast as 600MHz, according to TI's Dougan.
Both phones also use PowerVR graphics from Imagination Technologies--a company that both Apple and Intel have invested in, testifying to how hot its ultramobile graphics technology is. The PowerVR SGX is renowned for its ability to process several million triangles-per-second--a key indicator of graphics chip performance--blowing away other phones and the previous version of the iPhone.
Other internal specifications are similar between the two phones, including memory capacity (either 16GB or 32GB) and communications chips that offer 3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth connections.
So, internally the Droid is every bit the iPhone's equal. And future versions of TI OMAP 3 chips that may appear in upcoming Droids will be backed by formidable ecosystems, according to Baron. "Investments in application software may lean more toward the TI components," said Baron, given TI's strong support of the entire chip ecosystem, including auxiliary chips and software development tools.
Note:: Apple's and Samsung's reluctance to release information about the processor used in the iPhone 3GS has made it difficult to determine if the chip is based on the Samsung S5PC100, according to the Microprocessor Report's Baron. Many iPhone 3GS reviews and teardowns, however, state explicitly that the iPhone's processor is essentially the Samsung S5PC100 processor.
The chip recovery is under way, with quarterly sales forecast to increase year-over-year for the first time in 2009, according to a report from market researcher iSuppli on Tuesday.
Revenue from chip sales is expected to rise by 10.6 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2008. This would mark the first time this year that revenue has risen compared to the same period a year earlier, according to Dale Ford, senior vice president, market intelligence, for iSuppli.
"The seeds of the current recovery were sown in the second quarter," said Ford. At that time, manufacturers began to report positive book-to-bill ratios, indicating future revenue growth. This was followed by more sequential revenue growth in the third quarter, according to Ford.
Semiconductor inventories returned to more normal levels in the third quarter after chip suppliers shed stockpiles, he added.
Earlier this month, chip giant Intel said third-quarter revenue was down only 8 percent year-over-year, an improvement over the 15 percent and 26 percent year over year declines in the second and first quarters respectively. Intel also indicated that it expects future growth. "We're finished with the cutting phase of our efficiency effort and now in the growth phase of that efficiency effort," said Intel's chief financial officer Stacy Smith at that time.
Overall, it's been a tough year, however. Global semiconductor revenue is set to contract by 16.5 percent in 2009, following a 5.4 percent decrease in 2008.
And iSuppli has added a good dose of caution to its report. Though sequential quarterly increases in revenue will continue into 2010, sales growth will not be sufficient to lift semiconductor revenue back to pre-recessionary levels until the 2011-2012 time frame, according to Ford.
And there are troubling indicators such as the climbing U.S. unemployment rate, which reached 9.7 percent in August and is projected to exceed 10 percent at its peak, which will continue to constrain consumer spending, Ford said.
