MeeGo Linux is being developed as a platform for smartphones, netbooks, internet connected TVs, in-car systems, and other devices where Windows may not always be the best option. The project is backed by chip-maker Intel and smartphone maker Nokia. And so far, every device I’ve seen running MeeGo has had an Intel chip — usually a low power Intel Atom processor.

But in an interview with The Inquirer, Nokia vice president Alberto Torres explained that MeeGo is an open platform and that it will be available for device makers to use on a wide variety of hardware. In fact, Nokia’s first MeeGo device will have an ARM-based chip rather than an Intel x86 processor.

Nokia plans to release its first MeeGo product by the end of the year, but it’s possible that we could see other hardware makers bring devices to market using the mobile operating system sooner than that. MeeGo 1.0 for netbooks was released last week, and while there isn’t a lot of third party software designed specifically for the OS yet, it does run quite well on an Atom-powered netbook.

    Domestic brand notebook and laptop, Shenzhen, the difference is rooted in the different manufacturing industry chain, it is to understand the basis of their competitiveness. On top of that, the formation of a different product market positioning, determine the difference between marketing, determine the marketing costs.

1: Manufacturing industry chain decided to make the cost of

    In traditional notebook sector, through the notebook motherboard manufacturing and control of mold design, the Taiwan Department of Plant and effectively prevented the entry of mainland companies. In the real advent of low-power chip (VIA Delicate, Intel Atom), very little heat because the chip itself, Powerise Cheng, Canon Xin (brand books) and other motherboard heat Shenzhen, tackled the problem, to create a mature access to the Internet this board, the same time, continuous improvement, the Superman and other Shenzhen mold has developed sophisticated online this mold, the Internet with the conditions of Shenzhen.

    Current brand manufacturing enterprises, most enterprises from Taiwan OEM, such as the Shenzhou most products from Quanta, and Shuo foundry. In the Yangtze River Delta, Kunshan, Suzhou, Songjiang, etc., to foundry business as the core, over computer-related accessories, products packaged by the OEM business to the brands, formed a company controlled by the Taiwanese OEM notebook manufacturing industry chain, that is, The so-called vertically integrated industry chain. In this large-scale production, the maximum reduced cost, while ensuring quality, this is the so-called “Taiwan OEM” mode.

    Since Quanta, and the relative lack of master data, and this paper Foxconn OEM 900 (901) to do analysis, the model of domestic second and third line brands ③ and Shenzhen, some enterprises are sold, so a typical representative. ④ from the cost point of view, its manufacturing costs and the Shenzhou series of elegant small roughly equal, in Foxconn’s offer, the price of the OEM models between 1450-1480, according to the amount of different, slightly different prices, the same period, Shenzhen Factory OEM price between 1350-1400.

       To facilitate the presentation, we can simply put the material of two types of notebook ⑤, first for the five main parts, including CPU, motherboard, hard drives, memory, display screen, which determines the main performance notebook. The second category of other accessories, these items had little effect on the notebook, but instead to influence the user experience.

       In the first class of five main parts, the 900 model is concerned, CPU with N270, Fujitsu hard drive, memory crystal star, display group record, and Shenzhen enterprises to adopt, whether quality or price, basically no difference. Motherboard Foxconn were manufacturing and manufacturing in Shenzhen, because the key is very close to the cost of IC materials, quality and price are the same. It costs about five pieces of 1,000 yuan, accounting for 70% of the total cost laptop around.

       Parts of the second class, including: shell material (including mold) charges, battery, camera, keyboard, fan, shaft, touch pad, plus a number of accessories, power adapter, packaging, etc., in addition to labor costs. Because these parts basically localized in Shenzhen, Shenzhen price is relatively cheap.

    From the above analysis, we can draw some conclusions, first of all affect the quality and performance as the five pieces in all from the same large manufacturers, Shenzhen notebook with second-tier brands, product performance and quality, basically no difference . But unfortunately, most consumers do not understand this situation, the plight of the largest, still lies in the lack of consumer confidence, is the “lack of training of ⑥”. Brand enterprises defamation, misleading the media, past history image, both on the Shenzhen notebook consumers lack confidence in how to establish a brand image in Shenzhen, rebuild consumer confidence, Shenzhen notebook companies must carefully consider.

    Second, the manufacturing costs, lower business costs in Shenzhen, Shenzhen, mainly due to minor parts localization. Since purchasing the brand size enterprises, in five cases, they have a comparative advantage. In the secondary parts, the Shenzhen company has a cost advantage, especially in the molds.

2: different costs of product marketing, product positioning decision

    The above calculation, only the manufacturing cost, the price of the actual channel, the price of the Shenzhen factory about 1450-1500, while the price of the Shenzhou small compared to 1800-1850. Shenzhen enterprise channels increased production costs than the price of just 100 yuan, while the Shenzhou has increased 400 yuan, it is because the product costs more than manufacturing costs, marketing costs also included. Product marketing costs, including product advertising costs and channel costs.

       2010, Shenzhou investment in CCTV has reached 127 million tender, Wu Haijun claimed that the CCTV will reach 200 million yuan of total investment giant, according to its estimated 2.5 million computers (including notebooks and desktops) in sales terms, each computer “contribution” to the CCTV 80. This just is a part of their advertising investment.

    So in the end little advertising can not even advertise, this way we can more effectively reduce costs, this is the crux of the issue. The course of development from the observation of the mobile phone industry in Shenzhen, Shenzhen, most SMEs have never advertised, but was in the low-end mobile phones in Shenzhen area of scenery is fine, and this gives us a profound revelation.

    In short, the role of advertising is that consumers understand the product, which is the industry so-called “pull”, that is driving consumers to buy. Shenzhen notebook sales, relying on the channel business, “thrust” through them to introduce the product to the consumer, as long as the channel, retailers profitable, they will spare no effort to promote.

    Management told us that marketing to determine the positioning of the product. Brand enterprises, market their products in high-end, more attention is the brand and image, and this must be through advertising in this form. The notebook industry in Shenzhen, the products targeted at the low end, affect the low-end consumers to buy the primary factor is the price, only more effectively reduce costs, to win the support of low-end consumers.

3: Change coming, and the plight of Intel and the brand’s market

       In the PC industry over the past 20 years development, has been technology-oriented, mainly in the continuous improvement of CPU performance and promote continuous development of the industry. Tireless performance thanks to Intel chips increase, to date, even the most low-end Intel chips, have been able to meet the needs of most consumers, notebook industry conversion from durable goods to consumer goods, from technology-oriented to market-oriented transformation , the emergence of netbooks, a market-oriented a classic example.

       However, all along, Intel has a prohibition: the prohibition of Atom chips use 10. Inch above models. Intel from their own interests and do everything possible to promote its high-profit brands of chips, low-profit limited Ling chip shipments moving against the market and consumer demand, which is Intel’s market difficulties. Brand enterprises, the same difficulties exist, the current impact of the Internet this is the traditional notebook profits. Intel and brands together, the large size of the market demand for netbooks is artificially suppressed, the damage is the interests of consumers.

       The plight of our competitors is our breakthrough of the road, about 2 years in the future within the industry, large-size notebook Shenzhen Internet this will have a strong competitive advantage, a step by step occupied by low-end market, in the process, Shenzhen notebook manufacturing industry chain will become more perfect and competitiveness is improved, the industry’s low-end and brand of full-face confrontations.

       In the more distant future, everything is full of variables, but the only sure is that the competitiveness of the Shenzhen notebook industry more and more powerful, and eventually place the entire notebook industry.

Hewlett Packard is shelling out $1.2 billion to purchase Palm. While HP used to be a pretty major player in the mobile device space, over the past few years the company hasn’t shown much enthusiasm for the cellphone market, offering just a handful of iPaq-branded Windows Mobile phones and PDAs. But it looks like that could all change soon, with HP promising to invest heavily in Palm’s WebOS mobile operating system.

Engadget reports that HP also plans to leverage WebOS across multiple platforms — which could even mean we’ll start to see the operating system on iPad-like tablets. After all, the iPhone OS works pretty well on the iPad. And a number of companies are building Google Android-powered tablets. Why not a WebOS-based tablet? Or maybe we’ll see the Palm Foleo brought back from the dead as a WebOS-powered netbook?

If there’s one thing that’s becoming abundantly clear in the tablet space, it’s that operating systems that are built with touch in mind are a lot easier to use with slate computers than operating systems that were designed for use with a keyboard and mouse — even if some touch-friendly features were slapped on as an afterthought. Because let’s face it — there’s not a single application that runs on the iPad that wasn’t designed to be operated with your fingertips. You can’t really say the same about the Asus Eee PC T101MT.

You can read more about HP’s plans to purchase Palm at Mobiputing.

Update: Yup, it’s official. HP is thinking about WebOS slates and netbooks… and may even put off the launch of the HP Slate to decide whether it should really run Windows 7 or if WebOS would be a better fit. ]]> http://www.deliton.net/hp-to-buy-palm-next-week-webos-tablets-on-the-way/feed/ 0 http://www.deliton.net/eken%e2%80%99s-100-7-inch-android-tablet-7-inch-800-x-480-pixel-display-a-600mhz-arm-based-cpu-2gb-of-storage/ http://www.deliton.net/eken%e2%80%99s-100-7-inch-android-tablet-7-inch-800-x-480-pixel-display-a-600mhz-arm-based-cpu-2gb-of-storage/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:25:24 +0000 admin http://www.deliton.net/?p=652

The Eken M001 is a 7 inch touchscreen tablet running Google Android 1.6. An Android tablet that doesn’t ship with access to the 50,000 apps in the Android Market might not seem all that exciting. But it’s hard to argue with the price tag — It runs about $100 in China, and distributors can pick it up for as little as $80 per unit if they order 100 or more tablets.

Eken is a Chinese device maker, and it’s unlikely that you’ll see this tablet sold under the Eken name outside of China. But Haleron has already started marketing the tablet as the Haleron iLet Mini HAL, and plans to sell it internationally for between $179 and $229.

I’ve expressed some doubts about Haleron in the past, since I have yet to hear of anyone successfully ordering a product from the company and nobody has responded to my requests for information. But a source in Taiwan tells me it’s not unusual for companies like Haleron to act as middlemen and market and sell devices manufactured in China without first placing orders with the OEM — only placing the orders when it becomes clear that there’s demand. So it’s possible that Haleron will make good on its offer to deliver this tablet, it just hasn’t stocked up on units yet.

Anyway, the folks at Shanzai.com got a sample unit of the Eken M001 and has posted a video review, which you can check out after the break. The tablet has a 7 inch, 800 x 480 pixel display, a 600MHz ARM-based CPU, 2GB of storage, and an SDHC card slot for expasion. The tablet has 802.11b/g WiFi, and a navigation dial next to the power button.

There’s an accelerometer which allows the screen to auto-rotate between landscape and portrait mode. the touchscreen appears to be capacitive, as the reviewer keeps poking at the screen with a fingertip rather than a stylus or fingernail.

While you don’t have access to the Android Market with the Eken M001, it does ship with a web browser, a handful of games, and an app for watching videos from Chinese online video site tudou.

The Barnes & Noble Nook is first and foremost an eBook reader. But it’s powered by Google Android and it has a color touchscreen display in addition to the e-Ink screen for reading eBooks. It’s kind of just been begging for a few apps beside the eBook reader, and today Banes & Noble pushed out a new firmware update for the Nook that starts to turn this eBook reader into a multfunction device.

Firmware version 1.3 includes a web browser, faster page turning, a few Android games, and a Read in Store feature. The Read in Store features sounds pretty awesome, since it will let you flip through the pages of any eBook available through the Barnes & Noble electronic store when you’re in a bricks and mortar store. The books will disappear from your device when you leave the store, so it’s kind of like sitting in the coffee shop at a Barnes & Noble with a stack of books you picked up from the shelves and checking them out to see if you want to purchase them to take home.

The web browser is clearly going to be a bit limited, since the Nook has an e-Ink display that can’t show color, and can’t play video. But now you can use the Nook to login to WiFi hot spots that require you to check a box on a web page first. And you can read newspaper web sites, blogs, or other content on the e-Ink display while using the color screen on the bottom of the device to navigate.

The first Android apps available for the Nook are Soduku and Chess. Hopefully we’ll see more apps in future updates.

Nook users can find instructions on applying the update at nook.com/update.

The Samsung NB30 may have all the usual netbook specs including a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 1GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Starter Edition. But this netbook has a few features that make it a bit more durable than a typical netbook, including a free fall sensor that helps protect the hard drive in the event of a fall. The case also features a scratch-resistant design, and the keyboard is spill-resistant.

Samsung sent me a demo unit to review for a few weeks, and you can check out my unboxing and first look video after the break. (Sorry about the poor video quality, the sun was shining so brightly that I had a hard time seeing the LCD on the camera and didn’t notice the window shade cord in front of the camera).

At first glance, the keyboard looks virtually identical to the one of the Samsung N210 I reviewed recently. While it features decent sized keys, I have to say, I found typing on that netbook to be slightly less comfortable than on other 10 inch netbooks — although that’s probably a matter of taste.

I do really like the overall design of the Samsung NB30 though, which manages to come across as both semi-rugged, and still rather attractive

Acer is reportedly preparing to launch a new 10.1 inch netbook that chucks the Intel Atom chipset for an AMD chip. Macles reports that the Acer Aspire One 521 will have a 1.2GHz AMD V105 single core processor.

The V105 is part of AMD’s Nile lineup, and it has 512KB of L2 cache, support for DDR3 memory, and a total power draw of 9 watts, which makes it pretty efficient for an AMD chip. What we won’t know until someone gets a chance to run some benchmarks is how the AMD V105 compares to an Intel Atom chip when it comes to performance.

The Aspire One 521 will also reportedly have ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics and the AMD M880G chipset. As you can probably guess from the fact that the graphics processor has HD in the name, the netbook should be capable of HD video playback and it even has an HDMI output. I wouldn’t expect NVIDIA ION-quality 3D graphics performance here, but it seems like 720p and maybe even 1080p HD video support should be on the table.

According to Macles, the netbook will have optional Bluetooth 3 support and a compact charger with changeable plus. The battery is supposed to be good for up to 7 hours.

No word on a launch date or price. You can find more pictures at Macles, which has a pretty good track record of digging up news on unannounced Acer laptops.

This wouldn’t be Acer’s first foray into producing an ultraportable lapotp with an AMD processor. The company has been offering the Acer Ferrari One with an 11.6 inch display and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor since December

Nicole from Netbook News got a chance to check out a netbook prototype from a subsidiary of Quanta at the WiMAX Forum in Taipei recently. The defining feature of this laptop is probably the fact that it has a built in WiMAX modem, which means you can connect to 4G mobile broadband networks without a USB dongle. But the thing about built in wireless components is they don’t really give you much to look at… the netbook is somewhat generic looking overall.

But it does have an interesting keyboard with wide, flat keys. It looks kind of like the keyboards Acer is using on its 11.6 inch laptops, but the keyboard features a double-sized Enter key and a small shift key on the left side of the keyboard, with a full sized shift key on the right.

Quanta doesn’t sell computers under its own name — but the company manufactures PCs for other big name computer vendors. So it’s possible that we could see this netbook show up with a different brand name eventually