Intel's Atom To Ship In Over 35 Tablets Next Year 146
nateman1352 writes with a bit from TechSpot: "Intel has been trying to cut itself a slice of the mobile market for years, and it seems the company is finally making some headway. During a conference yesterday, Intel CEO Paul Otellini revealed that the company's Atom platform will ship in over 35 tablets starting early next year. The chipmaker has partnered with more than a dozen manufacturers who will launch slates running Windows [or] Android as well as Intel's own MeeGo operating system." The article lists Toshiba, Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Asus, AT&T, Cisco, and Acer as developing Atom-based tablets.
Will Microsoft do its part? (Score:5, Insightful)
The question for me is, will Microsoft do its part? Are they gonna half ass it by slapping on some lame, choppy UI that takes up even more memory and resources on top of Win7? Or will they do the right thing and strip Win7 down to its core and work on a first class tablet experience from the ground up? Remember MinWin? That sure looked cool, but where has that gone?
My guess is they will half ass it as they always do, and then a bunch of clueless execs will be left scratching their heads why sales flopped. Then, a handful of execs who knew the whole thing sucked and fought to do the right thing will leave and defect to Google or start a company. The wheat will leave and Microsoft will be left with the chaff.
Very much this (Score:4, Insightful)
The new Oak Trail and Moorestown processors look interesting from a raw technology point of view. Low watts, great power management, good performance, x86 compatible. A guy could make a lot of neat stuff with that. But a processor is not a platform. Intel has shown some shortsightedness in product positioning on netbooks by encouraging OEMs to stay within a platform definition for display size, memory configuration, and so on. They're afraid of "cannibalization". This limits the scope of creativity for the designer and prevents the creation of innovative systems that excite people. The fear of cannibalization is actually a fear that the new product will be overwhelmingly successful and sweep the field - which for any other chipmaker would be the ideal outcome, not something to be feared. The field needs sweeping, and I think the competitors are going to get her done by taking the field without these self-imposed hobbles.
That, and no current major PC vendor will ship a system that can run Windows with anything but Windows. That means that non-Windows systems with these processors will be made in low quantities, and Windows systems made with these processors will sell in low quantities no matter how many are made. The market has clearly spoken about the desirability of Windows tablets - screamed it in fact. So unless Intel can change the entire market dynamic of Windows and OEMs, these processors are going nowhere. Maybe Apple, Samsung and HTC will do the needful thing - otherwise this time next year we'll have forgotten these processors and be talking about the awesome iPad2 and other ARM tablets that continue to innovate and impress. There will of course be the usual number of indefatiguable fanboys for the Windows tablets product online - just like there are for WP7 and were for Vista - all of them posting from the same script, which is sort of creepy.
But the chips themselves? Yeah. Way cool tech. Way to go Intel! You guys sure know how to make chips. Congratulations on 35 design wins. I sure hope you manage to figure out how to sell chips into mobile and get people excited about your products in that space. But I'm not counting on it. It's not about the widget or the gadget. It's about the people and what they can do with it.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand why some people want to be compatible with x86, which is mainly for Microsoft Windows. Since most applications aren't designed for touchscreens, however, you don't need and shouldn't be using Windows in the first place. The target market for tablets is Web browsing, email, instant messaging, etc. It's an internet appliance.
So if they don't need Windows, why are they using Atom in the first place? ARM processors are much better on a processing-per-watt basis, which should be your primary target when designing a portable device.
Nintendo understood from the beginning that low-power is crucial for portable devices, which is one of the main reason the GameBoy won over all the other portable devices. The SEGA Nomad was a great idea, a portable Genesis/Mega Drive, but it could barely run 60 minutes on a set of fresh, brand-name alkaline batteries.
So my question is: are those companies so fucking stupid that they want to make inferior products or are they just too braindead to make software? Do Microsoft have a gun to their head? What's going on here?
And oddly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, tablets will be a big thing in 2011 and probably beyond, but not because of all those slow megacorps.
Re:Fingers crossed... (Score:5, Insightful)
I despise Objective-C, but I'd take iPhone as a target platform over Android any day.
This is the biggest fad since Palm (Score:5, Insightful)
We recently went live with an EMR (Electronic medical record) at our hospital. As slick as the EMR is, it is written for a keyboard and a mouse. Guess what the docs want, you guessed it; Can we get it work on an IPAD? Oh yes, while technically possible via Citrix it is about as about as practical as mounting a steering wheel on a horse. Can't you teach the horse to respect the steering wheel? Um, no.
We have tried tablets in the past for the EMR. The users get excited about them and once they have them, they collect dust. $2,000.00 state of the art spill proof made especially for hospital settings tablet PC's which never leave their docking bays. What a waste.
All tablets are currently toys, iPad included. If I want toy to play with and have an extra couple hundred bucks burning a whole in my pocket then maybe I will buy one, but why would I want a toy with limitations, like the iPad?
Tablets may some day be a respectable tool for some apps who's developers are willing to write to them, but that will be 10 years out. Then, they will be about as sexy as a Palm is today.
Re:At least SOMEONE realistically estimates their (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is those people have had that option for years....and no one bought them. Look up the Motion Computing tablets or the HP Tc1100. Both had all the "something else" like usb ports, video out, memory card slots, all the crap that supposedly everyone wants...but they didn't sell for shit. I really wish the people who whine about their choices being too locked down had put their money where their mouth is but unfortunately all the whining in the world doesnt work if no one buys the products available so manufacturers get the idea that simple and stripped down is really more what people want.
Re:Intel jealous of Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Definitely a song from the US ...
Re:Very much this (Score:5, Insightful)
how the hell is "x86 compatible" an advantage?
Oh, come on, you can't be serious.
More software has been written for x86 compatible than all other platforms combined.
The potential for re-use of existing systems and software must be patently obvious even to the most bigoted of OS snobs.
Re:Fingers crossed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Worse yet, if you're trying to build anything game related, it's an absolute disaster.
With iPhone, you get a guarentee that 90% of your target market has a PowerVR SGX and can run OpenGL ES 2.0 pretty well.
With Android, you get no real graphics chip on 70% of devices in the wild, and on the other 30% the performance varies so wildly that you have no way to judge how much graphics work you can do.
Re:At least SOMEONE realistically estimates their (Score:4, Insightful)
Both had all the "something else" like usb ports, video out, memory card slots, all the crap that supposedly everyone wants...
Would you like to bet that all 3 of those make it into the iPad over the next 1.5 years?
People do want that crap, it's just that Apple intentionally withheld it so they can trick OCD Apple fans into buying the next 2-3 models of iPad they release over literally the next 2 years. Seems kind of cynical to me, but they're probably right - Apple fans will lap that shit up.
So your point is silly. Apple has a built in set of marketing tools that nobody else has, and they had good timing with the iPad.