While we’re still not convinced by the tablet form factor (perhaps, given our focus we wouldn’t be!), it seems we won’t be able to walk for tripping over them by the end of the year.

Speaking to ComputerWorld, ARM’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager Roy Chen said he expected over 50 different models of tablet PCs to be on the market before 2011. “The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers,” he explained, “[but] you’ll see a lot more in the third quarter.”

As might be expected, Chen didn’t break down specific agreements ARM has with these tablet makers, but he did say companies across the globe are onboard, including “the top 10 telecommunications network operators”. Chen also demonstrated two tablet prototypes: an unnamed in model from Compal running Android and using Tegra 2, and a smaller Freescale-based tablet also using Android curiously named the ‘Armadillo’.

ComputerWorld didn’t take snaps of these devices, but let’s be honest here: we all know what Android looks like and there’s only so much variation you can introduce into a form factor which is essentially a slab with a screen on the front. Then again, as I’ve already said: we would say that…

Gordon

Back in January (yes, it already seems a long time ago!) Freescale showed off a so-called ’smartbook tablet’ reference design, which it claims could ship later this year for under $200. Well, it seems more flavors could be available than we had imagined.

In a video from Armdevices.net (below), it turns out the (still unnamed) tablet is a surprisingly flexible little beast, having been optimized to play nicely with any form of Linux-based OS, including Android and Chrome OS (known in its development stage as ‘Chromium’). This is interesting stuff, because the ARM-based Freescale i.MX51 processor at the heart of the tablet is extremely cheap to produce, and has also now been tweaked to support OpenGL ES and hardware acceleration of HTML5 video playback, suggesting overall system performance could be surprisingly good.

This would provide a shot in the arm (no pun intended, maybe) for the budget sector, since it has come in for strong criticism for producing bargain bucket models in recent weeks such as the $85 Coby NBPC722 and Firstview Nike PC706V, whose components are valued at just $65. These machines pack such paltry feature sets they risk doing more harm than good to the smartbook name. After all, netbooks have had a hard enough time for their perceived lack of performance and they feature specifications many generations ahead of what is on offer here.

Freescale isn’t putting a firm release date on its tablet yet, but does hope third parties will start selling it in the latter half of the year. Now if only Google can get its Chrome OS concept UI out the door, all ARM-based tablet developers could have something really exciting to shout about…

Gordon

We were pondering a week ago whether Coby’s $85 retail price would start a new tidal wave at the low end of the nascent smartbook market.  It didn’t take long to come to an affirmative answer.  Android Community and Ubergizmo carried briefs March 9 on an Android-based smartbook from Firstview HK Electronic Ltd. with a bill of materials at $65, though no retail prices were floated.

This is one of the Asian vendors choosing to use the Via Technologies Inc. ARM 9 clocked at 533 MHz – not a Snapdragon or Tegra to be sure, but possibly of interest to the value-conscious.  (What?  Firstview didn’t use VIA’s preferred “netnote” nickname?) Firstview’s decision to name the smartbook the Nike PC706V indicates the company has no intention of marketing in North America, or is fearless about taking on a sports apparel company known for its trademark protection.

This Nike sports an 800 x 480p 7-inch screen, Android 1.6, 128 Mbytes of RAM, Wi-Fi, USB drive, and 2100 mAh battery with four-hour capacity.  David Junior’s dispatch in Android Community suggests Firstview will take on a strict ODM role, allowing other OEMs to label this platform and possibly add additional features.  Depending on OEM customization, that could mean a retail price of less than $100, or approaching $200.

Will the arrival of many low-end smartbooks expand brand equity, or create unrealistic pricing expectations for more enhanced brands like Lenovo and HP?  It’s nice to welcome as many players as possible, but somewhat unnerving to think what a price war might mean.

Loring

As I watched the latest raft of Apple iPad advertisements gracing the Academy Awards March 7, something troubled me regarding Apple’s recent lawsuits against HTC (and, indirectly, Google’s Nexus One).  So am I just an inherent Apple basher?  Isn’t Apple protecting its intellectual property in the same aggressive way Nokia is?  Would we expect anything less?

But as I viewed the disembodied hands expanding icons to applications on the eagerly-anticipated iPad, it suddenly occurred to me why there is something troubling going on.  Nokia is following the well-trodden paths of the likes of Texas Instruments Inc. and IBM Corp. – making tactical best advantage of a patent portfolio to turn it into its own revenue stream.  This can be quite lucrative, particularly if the company in question is not shipping as many products as it used to be.  If overused, this strategy can turn a company into a patent mill, but Nokia probably looked at the continuing product business of TI and IBM, and figured the strategy was worth the risk.

If Apple takes a tactical position of protecting its particular means of implementing touchscreens, or tying applications to touch behavior, fine.  If it wishes to set up a licensing pool to charge a reasonable fee for utilizing touch methods similar to Apple’s on future smartphones, tablet computers, or smartbooks, I have little problem other than possible quibbles with Apple over the royalty rates one might define as “reasonable.”  But given Apple’s past behavior, I fear that the company wants to stake out the touch-sensitive application invocation from handheld device as something uniquely Apple’s.  And the TV ads last weekend carry this subtle but sinister message that you can’t live without the touch-activated experience of iPad/iPhone/iPad Touch, and that Apple will make damned sure it gets its pound of flesh from every touch-addicted mobile user worldwide.  Or maybe that’s my paranoia shining through.

Loring

With all this talk of netbooks, smartbooks and tablets, it’s easy to forget Intel’s somewhat hybrid Classmate series. So Intel has given us a timely reminder.

As the name suggests, the Classmate series targets the education sector and is essentially a rugged netbook with simplified OS. Specs-wise, they closely follow the netbook sector, so the refreshed line will ship with a new Pine Trail-based Atom processor. More interesting is the Classmate breaks from the mold with a tablet form factor and swivelling touchscreen 10.1-in. 1024 x 600 pixel display, backed up with connectivity options that include integrated 3G, WiMAX, GPS and Wi-Fi.

While targeted primarily at school children, practicalities with the Classmate such as a carrying handle, bump and scratch resistant finish, water-resistant and anti-microbial keyboard, shock-protected hard drive and screen rotating accelerometer mean it could prove ideal for the more clumsy adults out there as well. Meanwhile, dual headphone jacks allow students to share audio with a classmate or teacher (nice for couples too?), and battery life lasts up to 8.5 hours with the optional six cell battery.

Pricing is dependent on partnerships with education authorities in different countries, but I certainly think there is much both the smartbook and more traditional netbook sectors could learn from the thought that has gone into the Classmate.

Perhaps Intel can take a leaf from the so-called ‘adult editions’ of the Harry Potter novels and release an edition for grown-ups. I’ve heard worse ideas…

Gordon

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs made news March 4 by telling attendees at an investor conference that he foresees a smaller pool of wireless chip providers. The number of players, he said, will shrink due to consolidation or companies simply disappearing.

He stopped short, however, of saying that Qualcomm would be a consolidator. Instead, he said Qualcomm would essentially pressure competitors out of the market with aggressive pricing and technological innovation.

Qualcomm certainly has the technical prowess and the leading market position to accomplish that, but it also has the cash to buy competitors, and should consider doing so where it makes sense. While its stock price has taken a hit – down more than 15% this year – Qualcomm has nearly $19 billion in cash and equivalents on hand. (However, that’s before the company increased its quarterly dividend by 12% and announced a $3 billion stock repurchase program).

Jacobs’ consolidation comments reminded me of similar, yet more stark statements by Oracle’s Larry Ellison in the early part of the last decade. Frustrated that too many companies were chasing after too few dollars in enterprise software, he predicted a drastic consolidation. And he put his money where his mouth was, spending tens of billions buying more than 60 software companies.

There are not nearly as many players in wireless semiconductors as there are (or, were) in enterprise software and the market for wireless technology, at hundreds of billions globally, is as big or bigger than that for business software.

The wireless chip market will coalesce around a handful of leaders, mostly because semiconductor innovation is expensive and very challenging, and because device makers are loathe to trust their own product cycles to smaller, unproven companies.

Qualcomm is already in an enviable position as the leader in 3G chips, and it’s making inroads with Snapdragon in phones and, eventually, smartbooks. The company could accelerate its market share growth and carve out an even bigger position by giving the market a nudge and open its wallet.

Lisa

The rampant blog traffic March 4 regarding Coby’s offer to take smartbook prices below $100 could have been anticipated.  Semiconductor suppliers can talk about “bills of materials” until they’re blue in the face, but when someone offers a smartbook at a retail price of $85, the message gets through to the end consumer.

Most reader comments at Engadget (from whence this picture comes) and ZDnet center on whether ruggedness and reliability matter at a price that is at par with a nice dinner for two.  Certainly, we can’t fault the NBPC722 with making compromises that are anything less than typical smartbook specs.  The platform has a 7-inch screen, which ZDnet’s Sean Portnoy suggests is sub-standard, but is about what is expected in this category.  And the use of the Marvell PXA303 as a processor shows that the future Armada line could be a force to contend with — though it underscores the semantic question we have asked in the past, if a platform uses something other than an ARM, is it still a smartbook?  The NBPC722 is based on the former Intel XScale architecture.

What will be important to watch is whether users consider 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 2 GB of flash, and Windows CE to be a paltry feature set.  My own bet is that at these price points, they won’t last long (both on the shelves of dealers, and in the hands of users).  End users will be forgiving of less than an optimal connectivity experience, if they can buy or receive the Coby as a gift, or as an afterthought purchase for the kids.  Maybe Coby could find a market as a virtually disposable smartbook for travel.  It’s relevant to note that Coby’s US business has been centered on portable MP3 players and audio products, showing that the Nvidia notion of the audio player evolving into a lower-end smartbook has some justification.

This has to put some fear and trepidation in the hearts of OEMs and semiconductor suppliers alike, who will scrutinize Coby’s manufacturing costs.  Can other smartbook vendors meet these kind of constraints without sacrificing some dependability in display and motherboard reliability – and does that matter to the user?  Will the $85 blue-light pricing spark a price war that affects both smartbooks and netbooks?  Will the competition become so fierce that the  U.S. Federal Trade Commission eventually takes complaints about below-cost dumping?  Stay tuned.

Loring

Could the trade off between power and battery life be about to be quashed once and for all?

After weeks, even months, of speculation Nvidia has officially unveiled its second generation Ion platform to the world and called it ‘Ion’. Yes, despite all talk of ‘Ion2′, Nvidia has opted for the Intel/Apple approach of retaining the same key branding, which makes a lot of sense and keeps things simple.

So what does Ion (2) bring? Funnily enough, Nvidia didn’t break down the complete specs, but what was revealed is crucial: for a start, netbooks equipped with it should still seen battery life last “up to 10 hours” on a single charge and yet have no problems playing back Full HD 1080p video. Graphical prowess is also good enough to enjoy light 3D gaming such as World of Warcraft, therefore shifting netbooks into a whole new segment.

Perhaps most important, however, is the new Ion will be combined with Nvidia’s potentially even more groundbreaking tech: Optimus. For those with short memories, Optimus combines Nvidia’s discrete graphics with Intel integrated graphics to smartly switch between the two depending on the application. For example, when using Word or surfing the Web, the low power Intel GPU will be used, but should you suddenly start streaming HD video, the Nvidia chip will kick-in before shutting itself off the moment the clip has finished. Clever stuff.

Nvidia will scale Optimus technology all the way through the smartbook, netbook and laptop sectors, and while Acer has already shown off the second-gen Ion-equipped Acer 532G (pictured) heavyweights Asus and Lenovo have now also signed on to build new netbooks around it.

How will all this bolster Nvidia’s commitment to the smartbook market with Tegra? We can’t wait to find out…

Gordon

The European Union this week is imposing rules on mobile carriers that limit what they can charge customers for Internet access. The “roaming rules” let customers pre-set how much they want to spend monthly on roaming charges, which kick in when traveling outside one’s home country.

If customers do not pre-set their spending limit by July, operators will set a default limit of 50 euros, or about $65. Customers will be notified when they reach eighty percent of the limit.

The point of this, according to EU officials, is to protect customers against data roaming bill “shocks” which occur when they unwittingly run up huge bills surfing the Internet without first having the good sense to investigate what this long-distance connectivity will cost them, or simply turning the data roaming option on their phone to the “off” position.

To some degree there are limits on data usage in the U.S., as most carriers offer phones and plans with optional parental controls for limiting texting and other data charges.

We at Smartbookblog.com are all for cheaper Internet access. After all, it will be one of the factors driving smartbooks, which promise always-on connectivity. But I hope the U.S. does not take a page from the EU’s playbook.

I don’t want to see the U.S. government get involved in setting limits on access, largely because these so-called “shock” charges are self-imposed.  If you forgot to turn off the data roaming option or didn’t buy a plan that included roaming, should carriers be responsible for your bill? If you streamed a two-hour movie on your mobile device while outside the country, and somehow didn’t realize you were making a long-distance “call,” are the carriers responsible for your bill?

It’s great that prices will drop for EU consumers. I just wish the government didn’t have to step in to save consumers from themselves.

Lisa

Note: A reticle is a fancy name for the photomask used in the advanced form of photolithography found in deep-submicron chip plants.  There is no conceivable reason you would need to know this, but “rockin’ the reticle” leads to better headlines than most alternatives.

In these lean times of $10 billion semiconductor manufacturing plants and bankrupt chip designers, you have to go to great lengths to find good friends.  And now that the smallest feature size on a processor chip has plummeted well below 100 nanometers (or a tenth of a micron, hence the term “deep submicron”), there’s just not the standardization among chip wafer fabs there once was.  Used to be, Intel and AMD and Chartered Semi and Samsung might all move from 100 nanometers to 60 nanometers at the same time.  Now, the few Asian giants that dominate production have separate paths through 45 nm, 40 nm, moving down to the magic number of 28 nanometers, which represents a temporary brick wall for the densest chips made.

I mention all this to say that interesting coalitions are budding around that magical 28 number, and the coalitions met the smartbook players at the end of February, when ARM announced that it would team with Global Foundries to produce systems on a chip, or SoCs, that combined ARM Cortex A9 with useful peripherals that might be found in smartbook designs.  Global Foundries is a new joint venture formed by AMD with financing from an Abi Dhabi investment firm.

But wait, pundits were saying – doesn’t Qualcomm already have a deal with Global Foundries for access to that same process technology?  ARM may not see its primary business as being the volume production of packaged chips, but don’t the two Global Foundries pacts set up competing interests?  Given ARM’s business structure, the short answer would be “Not really,” but in any event, Qualcomm and ARM would not be entering new territory.  In fact, during the month of February, two aggressive direct competitors – Xilinx and Altera, producers of a programmable chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array or FPGA – found themselves at the mutual mercy of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.  Both of them were dependent on getting their chips from a common 28-nm process technology, and both companies had to figure out ways to differentiate their daily bread when it came from the same baker.

In reality, such differentiation is not hard at all, since much of the value-add for complex processor chips comes from the basic logic design, and from the instruction set.  Oops, cancel that last part – Qualcomm, ARM, Xilinx and Altera all use the ARM core in at least some of their designs.  But the intellectual property of associated blocks, and the software residing on top of that ARM instruction set, allows many chip players to offer unique products, even as they all are forced to turn to a pair of sole sources of 28-nm silicon.

The two companies in a unique position to control destinies of dozens of players, though, are TSMC and Global Foundries.  Everyone in the semiconductor industry complains about the outrageous capital costs involved in building 21^st century chip plants.  But once you’ve got a plant up and running, you’ve got the whole world in your hands.

Loring