I have been complaining about Google’s app bundling policies in Android over the past decade, I think those Google policies are anti-competitive but also counter-productive for Google itself. I think Google should support and encourage as much innovation around the Android OS as possible, they should let the manufacturers customize Android devices as they wish, Google should encourage their competitors such as Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Yandex, Baidu, Alibaba, Amazon, Rakuten and many many other large tech companies should be invited to subsidize Android device by pre-loading whichever other search engines and apps that they would like to pre-load, and they should also be encouraged to adjust, customize, enhance and even to fork Android to add new functionalities to the Android operating system, for example support for other app platforms inside Android, for example support for Windows apps in Android, support for iOS apps in Android, support for Linux apps in Android and much more. I also believe that Google will make more money also when Google opens Android up much more and better, to allow device makers to work with Google’s competitors when it comes to apps that are pre-installed, and including also to develop Android fully in the open source space sharing dailies of all daily Android development.

It’s important that Google cannot be taking any commission or advertising fees from these competing price comparison sites or these competing online stores like Amazon for them to be listed here. Google must fairly list the top most relevant price comparison sites and online stores which they would list at top of search results anyway. Google must integrate better with competing price comparison sites so they can nicely automatically list the top prices and if possible also grab images, product details to show on mouseover or even if possible integrated in this list if there is enough space.

Google can display Google Shopping as one of the options, let’s say, probably at the bottom of the list of price comparison search engines listed.

Users can customize how these lists are generated, users can choose to show by cheapest price. Users can select one or several favorite sites to always use each time they come back. Just as one can choose a default search engine on Chrome, one must be able to choose one or several favorite price comparison search engines, or for example choose to always only display Amazon Prime results on each search if Amazon Prime is the user’s favorite way to buy.

A click on a price can lead directly to shopping site, bringing a commission only to the price comparison engine on the sale, not taking any commission to Google on the sale. Unless the clicks are from the area of Google Shopping.

This UI and comparison or top price comparison sites and of top shopping sites must be adapted for mobile.

As for YouTube:

New Monetization should be implemented in two ways:
– Same as above Comparison and integration of top Price Comparison engines and of top user favorite stores such as Amazon must be integrated as the Instant Buy Now and Price Comparison overlay on top of every YouTube video. YouTuber must be paid as close to a 4% commission on each sale as possible, regardless the shopping site. YouTuber can choose if limit to any specific e-commerce site such as Amazon or let Google figure out the best comparison sites or shopping sites to show. YouTube may take a fair commission on the sales revenue on YouTube Shopping because the YouTuber choses to link only to sites that give a 4% commission back on each sale. A feature I have been asking YouTube to implement for nearly a decade.
– Viewers must be able to Donate and support their favorite YouTubers directly, see my illustrations below:

To easily allow viewers to one-click to donate any amount to support the YouTube content creator, the YouTuber must be able to enable a Dollar sign to be displayed on the left side of every Thumbs up icon on all monetized videos of the whole channel of the YouTuber.

Dollar sign in USA or if viewer prefers to donate in USD currency, this currency icon can also be €, £, ₹, ¥ or whichever based on viewer location (donations must work for any viewer worldwide) and converted in list of top donators to be displayed in the local currency of the viewer who is looking at that list.

Scroll down on the video page:

Below the video area, below description, but above comments, it should show the list of the top donators for that video. Viewer can switch to view top donators on whole channel in the last week, month, year or lifetime. YouTuber can limit if these week/month/year/lifetime lists should be shown or not throughout the whole channel of the YouTuber.

Donators can decide to display nickname (any amount of text up to short limit), realname, or display their @socialmedia/+googleplus/facebook-link or to display their blog/website/company URL as the donator. Google can be slightly smart and make sure an anonymous $0.49 donation cannot link as mcdonalds.com as the YouTube/Google account holder may have to verify ownership/control over advertised website.

When donating, the user can easily choose other ways to regularly support the YouTuber by recurring weekly, monthly, yearly or by payment for each new video posted, or for each 5/10/any number of videos posted.

A donator can have his comments highlighted and automatically pushed to the top of comments displayed below. Top donators can highlight comments more based on how much they have donated. There may be some settings that the YouTuber can control as to how much of a highlight the comment can get based on how much the donation amount is set for.

This system can thus turn some of the donations into advertising, as people can then show their appreciation for the YouTube content by showing off their blog, website, company as the top donator. As the top donator just for that video or the good idea could be to have companies and patrons/philantropists compete to be the overall top donators/sponsors not just for supporting under that one video, but supporting the whole channel over the past week/month/year/lifetime.

A donator can hide their contribution(s), turn those into anonymous and back into public name/company/socialmedia/website at any time.

Eventually YouTube can automatically add top donators/sponsors as end of clip “Thanks for the support of:” or any other text customizable. And top donators can even have their logos displayed automatically as end of show credits clip that YouTube can automatically add to specific videos or to the whole channel and to customize over time. A $20 sponsor may not have his logo in the end of show credits, YouTuber can specify certain thresholds that may or may not unlock that end of show credits placement. A very large donator/sponsor can even be inserted as a brief “Supported by” clip at the beginning of each video, but it must not be permanently inserted in the video, that dynamic credits system should be inserted by YouTube at beginning/end and can just be temporarily.

YouTube must not take a commission on the top donations system on YouTube, YouTube may only keep the approximate 2.6% credit card processing fee. This Top Donators system must be considered a system for fans and companies to become Producers/supporters of the content that is created. YouTube can still monetize every video as they usually do with ads, with YouTube Red subscriptions, and with the Buy Now one-click Shopping and customizable Price Comparison system that I specified above.

I have been wanting and asking to see a perfect Top Donators systems since 11 years ago when I paid a programmer $350 to get a WordPress top donators plugin made: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/paypal-donations-realtime-meter-top-6-donators/ but I didn’t follow up with it much, other than using it on my previous blogs for a few years and collecting something like $1000 in donations through the plugin in total I think.

Press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1784_en.htm
Source for the video: http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/focus/index.cfm?sitelang=en&focusid=2480

– Make these available worldwide. $299, $349, $449, $549 with different skews from FHD 4GB RAM 32GB Flash at $299 to 2400×1600 8GB RAM 128GB Flash at $549. Samsung, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, HP, all need to get in on the OP1 flip platform.

– Make sure there are 10-20 perfectly optimized apps for productivity covering all the basics people need on a Laptop. At least a few apps that cover “what people need on Windows/Mac” need to work on the Chromebook with OP1, make sure there is 3 perfectly optimized Office apps (Microsoft Office included), 3 perfectly optimized video and image editing apps (should be good enough for semi professionals to do fast rendering smooth 4K video editing and “anything that’s done with Photoshop/GIMP”), 3 perfectly optimized Chat/Video-conferencing apps including Skype, Whatsapp, Hangouts, few more “Facebook Messenger”, “Snapchat”, whatever young people use.. Just make sure there is a good range of very well optimized apps, that will show the way for other developers to also optimize thousands among the 2 million Android apps best suited for productivity. Have 10 “Nintendo-quality” awesome games work perfectly also, for optional gamepad bluetooth gameplay on large display or with any cheap $10 Type-C to HDMI on a HDTV. Google can offer “free” app re-optimization support to the developers who have promizing Android apps that just need to be slightly upgraded to work great on large display and well optimized also for keyboard/mouse usability.

– Nougat multi-window resizable. All the features of Remix OS, Phoenix OS, nicely resizable multi-window Android framework needs to be there.

– App/extension for perfect stylus annotation collaboration, annotate any webpage, any article, any document, and have collaborators over Google Drive. We also need a perfect community(ies) for “the annotated web”, when you select any text and you type in your comment/annotation on the keyboard. Needs to be ultra smooth and easy to use to make this revolutionary for productivity. It has to be a must-have for any student, for any professional and for any creative. If you select any text on any article on any webpage that has a comment section, then that selected section is automatically “quoted” when you type your comment, hit enter to post your comment about that selected quote. Or easily Google+1/tweet/blog, write your comment and link when you highlight a text. Thus different configurable modes/features for that pop-up menu when the stylus is taken out of its slot. Some will always want to annotate docs to collaborate in Drive, others will always want to auto-share quote and link article to Google+ or to Blog with typed comment, and easy switch between Stylus modes, should work with any content. Just only being able to annotate/scribble on a screenshot is too basic.

– Maximum dual display (external display) productivity, using Type-C to HDMI dongles/docks, it needs to be super easy to “open link in new highlighted or background tab in other window on other display” or to tab browse on one display while Android multi-window apps run on the other display.

– Android for productivity on these Chromebooks obviously has to be a taster of what can become available with “Android Continuum” once Android super phones dock with external displays and Lapdocks using DisplayLink, MHL, Slimport or a Chromecast-Continuum background app with Nougat/Miracast. Somehow, I wish the OP1 Chromebooks Type-C port would also allow for Lapdock functionality, to use your external superphone on Kirin 960 or Snapdragon 835 to “speed up” your OP1 Chromebook performance, somehow. Perhaps run some tabs/apps on the OP1 while others can be accelerated by your external phone which might have a more powerful ARM Processor. All the while the OP1 Chromebook also charges your phone by that same Type-C port. Somehow combine the Hexacore ARM Cortex-A72/A53 of your OP1 Chromebook with the Octa-core ARM Cortex-A73/A53 of your phone, also combine the GPUs, to have all these 14 ARM cores work nicely over that Type-C cable or even wirelessly (especially if your phone is the LTE hotspot for your Chromebook) for your optimal productivity.

Seriously Google, partner with Microsoft, pre-load Microsoft Office with some amount of included free months of trial for Office 365, pre-load Skype, help Microsoft make a perfect LinkedIn app, and also partner with Adobe pre-load some perfectly optimized Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere for Android, need to be VERY usable, very optimized for Android productivity and also include the Adobe Creative Cloud trial on there. Do this Google. And people will be impressed. No need to “force people to use Google Drive and Google Photos only”, you can bundle free trials for your services too (consumers will prefer Google apps anyway if those are better), just make sure the advanced apps people “need on Windows/Mac”, that those, even for semi professionals/enthusiasts, that those already work good BUNDLED on Chromebook with OP1. Close the gap and shut down any argument people might have against the Chromebook. Wanna do even more? Convince Apple to pre-load fully optimized iTunes and Garageband on the Chromebook with OP1 also (I’m sure Apple already has secret betas for these apps for Android, ready to release “just in case”). Don’t you know how to convince Apple this is a good idea? Let me know, I’ll tell you how. Shame them if they don’t.

Before the end of 2017, Google needs to “open up” the marketing angle on Chromebooks (basically fully supported (same auto security/feature updates) Chromium OS rebrand service for Chrome OS for any competitor), so Microsoft, Apple, Baidu/Tencent, Yandex and Adobe/Salesforce/others will be shipping customized Chromebooks with their apps/shortcuts defaults pre-installed. Don’t force anyone only ship with Google apps/shortcuts/search, let the consumers change those defaults if Google is better. Login should not only be using Google account, let users login with any other Microsoft/Apple/Baidu/Tencent/Yahoo/whatever user account. Let your competitors ship your free and open source software and with your usual Chrome OS support when it comes to security/speed/feature updates), help subsidize/promote the platform. Let competitors submit improvements/patches to the platform. Before the end of 2017, sub-$100 ARM Chromebooks need to reach every child in the world, just as OLPC intended more than a decade ago.

Don’t make OP1 Chrome OS exclusive, let it nicely run anything else. Let people boot into any Linux or into any other OS from MicroSD card or from a simple Type-C Flash memory dongle. So if Microsoft wants people to dual-boot or to replace Chrome OS with Windows 10 (with x86 win32 app emulation support) they should be able to do it. If Apple wants consumers to dual-boot or replace Chrome OS by a new Mac iOSX UI, let them do that. If consumers want to dual-boot or replace Chrome OS by Ubuntu or any other Linux, let them easily do that. Even have staff of Google employees support that and “recommend” stable OSes that work nicely. Always stable “factory reset” to manufacturer’s shipped official or custom Chrome OS no matter what would be ok, if there is a memory for that.

Related articles

• Google confirms Android apps out of the box on all Chromebooks launched from this point forward (9to5google.com)
• Every new Chromebook from here on out will support Android apps (liliputing.com)
• All Chromebooks launching in 2017 will be compatible with Android apps (techcrunch.com)
• Samsung’s latest Chromebook shows the future of Google’s laptops – but it has a long way to go (GOOG, GOOGL) (businessinsider.com)
• Samsung’s new Chromebooks get Google Play access and a stylus (techcrunch.com)
• Samsung’s new 2-in-1 Chromebooks now include a stylus (mashable.com)

check back later, now trying to fix the audio quality on this video

Would you like to participate in the next ARMdevices.net Hangout Show? Leave a comment here or on the Google+ thread with your Google+ Profile link and I will invite you to be on the next show when we record it live!

Thanks +Daniel Lietzan for sending me a Chromecast so I’m one of the first in Europe to be testing one! In this episode we talk about all the latest news around the Google Chromecast, Google’s “simplified Chrome OS” Powered HDMI Stick!

If you want to skip to some of my long ramblings:
10:19 Google Drive Unlimited Store Torrented movies, TV shows, Music for free
18:50 Showing off all my HDMI Sticks to compare

$50 Chrome stick would be nice. ARM Cortex-A15 on a HDMI stick running Chrome OS. I’m just saying.

Not sure if the $35 Chromecast Google HDMI Stick has an ARM Cortex-A15 processor in it though, what is the ARM Processor inside of the new Google Chromestick? Is Google using the Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 Rockchip RK3188? Tegra4? Something from Qualcomm?

Which ARM Processor is being used? Can it run a full Chrome OS On ARM also? USB Host (to Ethernet/RF/Hub) supported?

Can the Chromecast Chromestick run a full Chrome OS included for free? Why didn’t Google explain how to “unlock” the Chromestick to display a full ARM Powered Chrome OS on the TV?

I look forward to Chrome OS on ARM Powered HDMI Sticks, let it not just revolutionize Video-on-demand, let the $35 Google stick also be the x86 Wintel desktop killer.

1. My guess is Chromecast has MHL support, can otherwise get charge from MicroUSB, I wonder if a MicroUSB hub can allow for Ethernet connectivity on Chromecast.

2. I wonder how video games and apps are going to run natively on the Chromecast.

3. Does it support Bluetooth 4.0, RF and USB Host for wireless keyboards and mice to use the Chromecast as a Chrome OS desktop without a remote device?

Related articles

• Google Announces “Chromecast” – Runs Chrome OS (chromestory.com)
• Google Launches The Chromecast To Bring Chrome To The Living Room (techcrunch.com)
• Chromecast Is Official: Costs $35, Sends Video, Music, And Chrome Tabs To Your TV, 3 Months Of Free Netflix Included (androidpolice.com)
• “OK Google, What is Chromecast?” (chromestory.com)
• Chromecast hits $35 price point, aims to connect TV to the web this week (slashgear.com)
• Google announces Chromecast, a dongle to stream online videos to your TV (gigaom.com)

I don’t know if Google Motorola with Qualcomm is integrating those new sensors on the die of that Snapdragon/Adreno or if those new type of sensors are outside of the die on the SoC somehow. Does anyone here have any info about how Google Motorola and Qualcomm are doing it? And how are the other ARM SOC vendors going to start shipping all those new Sensor Fusion and advanced Sensor features into devices?

Google Motorola is shipping this new Motorola X8 ARM Processor in their new range of Droid phones (selling exclusively on Verizon in the USA) and it’s probably also in the Moto X phone to be launched next week in New York (I wish Goog was inviting me to any of their events).

Are you looking forward to Moto X?

I think that Moto X needs to be $199 unlocked out of contract, released for pre-paid carriers around the world, even shipping with dual-sim card support. If Google can source enough X8 ARM Processors with Qualcomm, enough screens from whoever provides Motorola with screens and if Google can have suppliers manufacture and assemble those fast enough (including those that are rumored to be assembled in the USA, I guess to supply the US market only), if Google wants to sell Moto X all over the developing world, Google can rapidly expand Motorola’s market share in smartphone sales worldwide. I can’t wait to hear more about the features of the Moto X, how Google integrates those new sensors in Android, how those Sensors expand on the features of ARM Powered devices and to hear more about the range of hardware that Google and Motorola are planning to release. Android merging with Chrome OS and Google TV is just going to be a small part of our future.

3 years ago, I first video-blogged about Freescale’s Contextual Sensor Fusion technology talking about Freescale’s Xtrinsic Sensor technology being launched at the Freescale Technology Forum in June 2010, that may be similar to the technologies now to be included in Motorola’s new range of devices including in the Moto X, this is what I wrote in the description of this video here on this blog in June 2010:

Imagine not needing a power button to turn on your phone, just pick it up. Imagine cheaper warranty as manufacturers will know when devices were damaged because of usage error such as fall or banging. Imagine new user interfaces that are much more relying on sensors as the new Freescale Xtrinsic sensors can measure stuff 2000 times per second (the bandwidth and architecture being better). Imagine also sensors combining their abilities through fusion, again, no need to wake up the main ARM processor of the device to do all kinds of things! Imagine the device knowing exactly how it is touched, how it is moved, how it is held, the touch is not anymore only on the screen! This means better battery usage, months maybe even years of seamless standby. The new Xtrinsic sensor only needs 12 micro amps of power to be turned on all the time!

Related articles

• Motorola X8 homemade SoC recap: modified Snapdragon forms ‘the first true mobile computing system’ (phonearena.com)
• Google/Motorola now have their own X8 ARM processor, to debut in new Droids (9to5google.com)
• Motorola new X8 ARM processor to power the Moto X (thedroidguy.com)
• Motorola’s X8 Mobile Computing System packs eight cores, one for language processing, one for contextual computing (androidauthority.com)
• Motorola introduces X8 chip for smartphones (liliputing.com)
• Motorola X8 8-core computing system official with Qualcomm backing (slashgear.com)
• Details on Motorola’s X8 Mobile Computing System (intomobile.com)

1. Google Smartwatch. (approx same “Wearable UI” as Google Glass) $199 BT 4.0.
2. Exynos5410/Tegra4/S800 Chromebooks launched. (prob 13.3″ $299, preferably with Pixel Qi 20-hour battery life).
3. Android 5 unveiled. intro “Full Chrome” on Android, Android Extension for Chrome OS too (that’s what I call “the merger”). Android 4.3 may get released at I/O with Android 5 release for months later.
4. Andy Rubin announced chief of new Google Internet of Things and Google Robots department (this is the new Google X project)
5. Google TV now part of Android 5. all HDMI/MHL turns any Android device to full Google TV UI, even HDMI throughput and IR blaster can be supported on most phones/tablets with adapter.
6. Google Gaming now serious. launches $99 Google Home Entertainment Console. It’s ARM Cortex-A15 with Mali-T678 GPU. Most Android games now mapped for TV controller game play. Exynos5410/Tegra4/S800 too.
7. Google Glass public release in 3 months for $499. $299 version by end of the year. Early Glass Explorers get choice of $1000 credit in Google Play Store or they get 2 extra Google Glass to give to friends/family.
8. Moto X Phones launched. $99/$199/$299 (540p-dual/720p-quad/1080p-octo) (maybe T4i/S600/T4) with no contract on T-Mobile in USA. unlocked worldwide. Waterproof, unbreakable, sunlight readable Pixel Qi LCD ultra long battery life.
9. Google Book launched. $99 WiFi e-reader with Google Books, Android E Ink front-lit based.
10. Google Play Subscriptions launched. $20/month for unlimited text/audio/video/apps (authors/devs can opt-out, users can pick any category separately at $5/month each, worldwide day-1). Overnight Google Play becomes by far biggest content platform worldwide.
11. Google+ 2.0. Now + gives personalized recommendations across web.

What am I forgetting? php/mysql wordpress/phpbb free hosting on Google App Engine? New YouTube monetization? White Space Global Google Voice (with launch of White Space modem in Moto X Phone)? The Cheaper $99 Nexus 7 Lite (RK3188 based)? Upgraded Google Arduino platform on ARM Cortex-M3? Google ARM Servers announcement for cheaper/better/cleaner cloud?

You can comment here or in my Google+ thread.

1. Let every YouTube Partner get donations like non-profits do. Integrate Kickstarter like functionality in YouTube channel “fund this video project, here are details what we would like to film” and show if goal is reached, donators can advertise their website/company if they want next to donations value.

2. Display Google Shopping Buy Now links under video and at end of video when the video is about a product that is for sale online, thus enable 4% commission built-in (quadruples revenue overnight I’d guess) Partner can opt-out or manage each video by evt selecting specific product from Google Shopping to list if that is not clear enough for Google based on title, description, search etc. Let Partner evt pick favorite web stores to list in priority, for example Amazon, Adorama, Newegg, Buy.com and BHphoto for US viewers, and others can be selected for other regions of the world.

3. Let viewers pay some monthly price perhaps $5/month or $10/month for an unlimited ads-free YouTube experience, simply remove advertising and set 1080p as default but only for the people who pay for YouTube. (doubles revenue overnight I’d guess), can also include netflix/hulu/amazon prime style contents, but unlocks ads on all YouTube Partner content by default. Partner can opt-out if they prefer. YouTube subscribers can evt get prioritized bandwidth in certain situations. Maybe there is a high-end 1080p encode, or premium 4K stream bandwidth when available.

4. YouTube should offer automatic “upload all my videos to YouKu” for Chinese audiences, until China finally at some point allows their people access to YouTube. Which may happen at any moment, but for now, please just let us easily clone everything to Youku. And a wordpress plugin to auto display the youku instead of youtube when website visitors are in China would be good. If you do this, maybe you’ll accelerate the Chinese Government un-blocking youtube simply because they’d be impressed you’d offer that kind of service. If not a service by Youtube, please link us to third parties who can hook up and automatically do this kind of thing.

5. Enable p2p video subtitling and subtitle translations. YouTube Partners can decide how much of a share of revenue to evt pay to volunteers who spend time improving the automatic subtitles and automatic translations of those subtitles. Thus when “manual subtitles” are available for video, that can be highlighted and displayed instead of the automatic one. And each can be improved collaboratively, subtitlers/translators get paid based on how many people view their work and evt how good it’s rated, let people rate those subtitles and translations of subtitles. The link to subtitle and to translate subtitles should be visible by everyone “improve subtitles” and “improve translated subtitle”, people can set which languages they understand in YouTube viewer settings to automatically display correct subtitles and buttons to “improve french subtitles here” or to hide that button if people are not interested to participate. All videos with for example over 100 thousand views may thus get better manual subtitles in many languages submitted by viewing public.

6. Offer p2p video titling/describing service. People can volunteer to watch yet unlisted videos as soon as a YouTube channel uploads them, and people can collaboratively submit manual titles/descriptions/tags for each video, which the YouTube upload can approve to be used to make the video public.

7. Auto-post YouTube uploads to WordPress blog, including management of WordPress categories when the YouTube video is being uploaded and eventual other default texts or code to add before or after video. Same for scheduled publishing.

8. Explain what time of day is best to publish video to get optimal view count based on channel statistics, suggest YouTube uploader schedule publishing to those times.

9. Improve YouTube Editor it needs to be near as good as Pinnacle/Sony Vegas/Avid/Final Cut etc. Let us edit with voice-overs, music, more stable frame precision, better flexibility/stability.

10. Offer p2p video-editing. People can spend time to offer suggested shorter edits of each video as alternative shorter versions of the video. Thus people watching who don’t have time, can switch to shorter user-submitted and upload-approved shorter version of video when that one is available. Allow also p2p video-editing to combine evt several videos into one, can be limited from playlist if YouTube upload decides to, or can be channel-wide. Also the edits must be approved by uploader before those can be listed somewhere in a “user submitted edits” section on the channel. YouTube uploader can decide how much to share evt revenue from edits with the editor.

11. Massively improve content recommendations algorithm. Let me enter a gree/red full screen mode. It must show me content YouTube knows I will like, let me Thumbs up each video with the space bar and let me evt skip video with right button. Thus remote control can be built with a big green thumbs up button and a red skip button (evt a red skip and dislike rating button also). People must be able to lie back in sofa and start some impressively awesome automatic playback of YouTube’s personalized recommendations of content. Each view must be absolutely awesome. Viewer must be able to type in area of interest, search query or pick from previous areas of interest that YouTube can detect, for example now I’m in the mood for tech videos, and at another point I’m in the mood for comedy videos, with evt tags like Android within technology and tags like Louis CK within comedy. For example. Build recommendations engine on YouTube that can reliably replace TV. When people watch YouTube in family or with friends, everyone has to be constantly impressed by each video shown. A mic in room can eventually record laughs as indicator to how good the content is and to attempt at continuing to show such cool content. Recommendations engine can automatically pick user submitted shorter edits instead of the full videos if it’s measured that the certain shorter edits are better than some of the original longer videos.

You can comment here on in my Google+ thread.

Using Google+ or Twitter, tell us what you would do if you had Glass, starting with the hashtag #ifihadglass.

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http://vimeo.com/58712650

What do you think the price is going to be? My guess is $100 for non-touch non-Retina version and $200 for touch Retina version. The goal to basically make the ARM Powered Chrome OS the number 1 OS for laptops/desktops worldwide.

1. Dominate worldwide sub-$100 phone market. Target the sub-$200 Android phone market too. Target all world countries, not just rich countries. This is how Motorola “easily” can get to scale and thus get to control smartphones components supply.

2. Design devices that merge Android with Chrome OS and Google TV. That means re-engineer and re-think Motorola’s Laptop Dock, Desktop Dock, Entertainment Dock, when you dock Android 5 thus switches to Chrome OS or Google TV depending on what you want on the external display.

3. Design flexible phones using rubber-like and leather-like materials. As soon as flexible screen suppliers are ready (not just Samsung’s flexible AMOLED), have designs ready to use the new form factors.

4. E Ink phones, be it like the Motorola Fone released in 2006 with an E Ink display, the new E Ink phones use Android. Can be E Ink only Android phones and Android phones where just the backside is an E Ink display.

5. Integrate DLP pico projector technologies in new phone concepts that project something like a 20″ touch-screen display onto any table. Thus design kick-stands, mirrors, lenses that facilitate that.

6. Google Glass, headmounted computing is going to be the new normal next year. Optimize the Motorola headmounted computer to fit every usage, design it so everyone wants to use them.

7. Wearable computing. Android Bluetooth wrist watches, Bluetooth headsets that merge into clothing for voice calls. Make every user feel like they are James Bond.

8. Mass market White Spaces modems and routers, small and low power enough to be included in every new Android smartphone and tablet. Cheap enough so that every ADSL/Cable/Fiber connection install a White Spaces router to quickly cover the whole world with free wireless broadband for everyone.

9. Mass producing Pixel Qi LCD based smartphones, tablets and laptops, for sunlight readablility and to extend battery life significantly.

10. New $100 ARM Powered Tablets for productivity. New $100 ARM Powered Laptops for productivity. Google and Motorola can take over some of the role of the One Laptop Per Child. These new devices are for the worlds children to use to make the world a better place.

Related articles

• Motorola “X Phone” Rumored As 2013 Android Heavyweight (pocketnow.com)
• Google and Motorola building their own ‘X-Phone’ according to reports (androidcommunity.com)
• Google and Motorola finally working on “X Phone” and tablet (phonearena.com)
• Google and Motorola working on the “X Phone” to take on Apple and Samsung (mobilesyrup.com)
• Motorola And Google Are Working On An ‘X Phone’ According To WSJ Rumor That Kind Of States The Obvious (realzahed.wordpress.com)
• Google said to be building powerful “X” phone with Motorola (phandroid.com)
• Google, Motorola plotting a so-called ‘X Phone’ to take on the iPhone and Galaxy S III (bgr.com)
• Google Prepping “X Phone” To Compete With Apple (valuewalk.com)

Chromebook on Android

Here are my expectations for Google’s rumored upcoming Chrome OS laptop/tablet hybrid:

– 12.85″ Pixel Qi LCD, Google sponsored, to be available to all other Android hardware makers as a new component. (Plastics based flexible unbreakable LCD for thinner lighter waterproof dustproof unbreakable build)

– Optical lamination allows for outdoor readable capacitive Pixel Qi LCD. Otherwise IR based Neonode touch can work.

– 20 million initial production batch, enough to make a significant mark on the market, next batch can be 100 million units.

– Android 5.0 to support Chrome OS on top of Android. Same for Ubuntu on top of Android. Multi-booting becomes standard feature of Android. It’s not really multi-booting, it’s enabling to run alternative Linux OSes on top of the base Linux OS of Android.

– $200, available worldwide on day 1. Second batch can be sold for $150 or $100. Schools can get rebates if they order one for every child. Google can subsidize a few of those millions to be used by Children in developing countries through the One Laptop Per Child project.

– 16GB Flash with SD slots and potentially a 2.5″ HDD slot.

– 25 hours battery life. 200 grams flat battery dock doubles battery life to 50 hours.

– Swivel screen. Super slim keyboard can hide behind screen for tablet mode.

– ARM Cortex-A15, either OMAP5 with SGX544 or Exynos5 with Mali-T604. Maybe another comparable ARM Processor.

– Modem slot, all types modems available as options, 3G+, LTE, White Spaces, easily user swapable. There is space for an internal usb modem too.

Let me know what you think of this rumored Google hybrid here or at my Google+ thread.

Related articles

• Google reportedly gearing up to launch its own, 12.85-inch Chrome OS touch notebook in Q1 2013 (thenextweb.com)
• Google reportedly releasing 12.85-inch touch-enabled Chrome OS notebook at the end of 2012 (9to5google.com)
• Google Reportedly Preparing To Sell Self-Branded Chromebooks (techcrunch.com)
• Why Google might market a touchscreen Chromebook (pcworld.com)
• Chrome OS and Android: There can be only one (pandodaily.com)
• Google’s Touchscreen Chromebook − Pros and Cons (news.softpedia.com)
• [News] Why Google might market a touchscreen Chromebook (pcworld.in)
• Ubuntu for Android is imminent (armdevices.net)
• How I think that the ARM Powered Chromebook is a big deal for the industry (armdevices.net)
• Is Google Readying a Chrome Touchscreen Laptop? (scooprocket.com)

Google Official:

Gigaom:

Sundar Pichai at unveil event by ubergizmo (until Google posts the full official event video):

I’ll add more videos of it here as bloggers post them!

Related articles

• Video hands-on with Google’s new $249 Chromebook (gigaom.com)
• Google Announces A $249 Samsung Chromebook Powered By Exynos 5 ARM Processor (techie-buzz.com)
• Google offers low-budget ARM-based Chromebook (news.cnet.com)
• Google offers low-budget ARM-based Chromebook (oddonion.com)
• Google Unveils New Ultra-Slim Samsung Chromebook for $249 (mashable.com)
• Hands-on with the new Samsung Chromebook (news.cnet.com)
• Google announces new Samsung Chromebook, available for $249 on Monday (theverge.com)
• Google Reveals New Chromebook For Low Price of $249 (VIDEO) (manolith.com)
• Google launches 11.6-inch ARM-based Samsung Chromebook: $249, ultra thin and light, 6.5-hour battery, 1080p video (engadget.com)
• New Google Chromebook is $249, dumps x86 for ARM (betanews.com)

1. Nexus Tablet, 7″ preferably with Pixel Qi LCD to merge Tablets with E-readers. Keyboard dock for Chrome productivity.

2. Android Jelly Bean launched, feature major new features and integrates Linaro code talked about in my video Linaro improvements to Android 4.0.4 performance on the Pandaboard TI OMAP4430 platform for speed optimizations. Most important feature I think is the merger of Smartphone, Tablet, Google TV Set-top-box, E-reader, Chromebook with final fully optimized Chrome on Android on ARM, full Desktop/Laptop level Chrome on ARM Android browsing.

3. Google upgrades Cloud Computing platform to support and host php/mysql web apps such as wordpress, phpbb, mediawiki, Google hosts it for free with unlimited bandwidth when AdSense is used on every page.

4. Google Entertainment System (GES) is launched. It’s a layer to turn all Android HDMI/MHL devices and Set-top-boxes into full home console gaming machines that can rival Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft as home consoles. Consider Google to launch the Google Entertainment System for $49 with HDMI out only and up to $99 with a full Google TV HDMI input/output and IR blaster functionality. It’s ARM Powered, it’s powerful enough to replace your Desktop computer outputting a full Chrome browser on your HDTV/Monitor and using Bluetooth or RF keyboard/mice. It includes the new RF signal to manage Android@Home, thus turning your home into an intelligent connected platform. Consider it a sort of Nexus device to show how Google TV should be done, to show home Android@Home should be done, to show how Android can be used to challenge home consoles, to show how ARM Powered Chromeboxes should be done and to show how the Google Android Hub system for WiFi, White Spaces should be done.

5. Google+ launches major Recommendation/Personalization functionality. Consider the web will no longer be the same. You’ll have a totally new experience of web content through a new version of Google+ that is able to provide automatic streams for you based on the items you +1. Finally, the + in Google+ is going to be making full sense. Finally the +1 button is going to be used and everyone will instantly understand the meaning of using the +1 button, it is to teach Google what you like and have Google show you better content automatically. It’ll be absolutely revolutionary. A totally new way to surface quality on the web. You don’t need a lot of followers, you don’t need to be famous, you don’t need to be viral, soon after you post quality/original content on the web it can automatically reach the deserved audience. Who circles who will make less and less sense. HD Google+ Hangouts (up to 1080p high bitrates) are added as an enterprise on-demand perhaps paid feature.

6. Google may open up Android development process after Jelly Bean. Consider it Google opening up nightly Android advancements to the rest of the world and taking in more upstream suggestions for Android improvements from the open source community in General. As part of Google’s anti-fragmentation effort, Google can announce real-time collaboration in the development of future versions of Android, so new versions of Android reach more devices sooner using over-the-air upgrade systems worldwide. Expect Google to announce Android’s total daily activations number to be well above 1.5 million if all Android devices are included in the count, meaning not limiting the count to Google Certified devices, but also include all Chinese devices sold not only in China, also sold in India, Brazil and worldwide. Google can announce that Android tablets daily activations also have overtaken the iPad since December 2011, again if all Android tablets are included in the count, also including the millions of non-certified Chinese Android tablets such as the $55 Android ICS tablets featured in my video: $55 AllWinner Boxchip A13 Tablet Factory Tour

7. Google Project Glass to be released before the end of the year. It’s not just the Google reference hardware, it’s more importantly about a software layer on top of Android optimized for Augmented Reality usages to be used hands-free using any heads-up microdisplay including the Kopin Golden-i that I filmed and that I have been using since October last year: Motorola Kopin Golden-i at CES 2012 I think it’s just a layer of new APIs for Android apps to function well in a hands-free headmounted mode, using Google Voice Actions for voice-commands, using the accelerometer, compass, and all other usual sensors and thus simply providing an optimized Android Home Replacement and APIs for that. The first Google Glass compatible devices can be released from $199 to $499 before the end of this year.

8. Google’s Self-driving car system should be targeted as sub-$2000 add-on that can be added to any car. Just add some sensors and cameras to the roof of your car, and insert some electronics to the driving system of your car, and it should be turned into a Google Self-driving car. Google can announce partnerships with several major car makers to include the self-driving car functionality as a sub-$2000 option to several car models, to be shipping before the end of the year.

9. $199 ARM Powered Chromebooks launched. imagine it as nice as an Ultrabook, but for $199, running a full speed Chrome OS on one of the latest ARM processors, for example TI OMAP4470, Tegra3, Exynos4412, HiSilicon K3V2, Qualcomm S4, and more. 20-hour battery life. 100% security using ARM TrustZone. Speed is way faster than Intel Atom Chromebooks, browsing speed is comparable to any $1000 Ultrabook.

What else are you expecting from Google at I/O this year?

You can discuss this thread on Google+: https://plus.google.com/106075758531242552855/posts/Sx8ttoic3NJ

My opinion and suggestion for Google:
I’d like to see Google invest heavily in Pixel Qi for a 7″ 1024×600 screen to be mass produced for the rumored upcoming Nexus Tablet, providing it 20 hours battery life on an ultra slim form factor, with a very small bezel if they can make it have a plastics based screen, suitable for reading Google Books, suitable for outdoor use. Google should invest the money needed in bringing Pixel Qi to the mass consumer market. And then also Google can help bring the 2048×1536 9.7″ Pixel Qi screen to the mass Android tablet market.

The success of the iPhone and iPad is due to ARM Technology, but also to the investments Apple has made in using new screen technologies, Apple basically financed exclusivity for the 3.5″ capacitive screen when launching the iPhone and they bought an exclusive on the 9.7″ IPS screen for the iPad. Now also Apple invested the $2+ Billion getting an exclusive on the 9.7″ Retina screen. Google should do the same, not only invest heavily to optimize Android on all the ARM Processors, Google should also invest the money needed in new screen technologies such as Pixel Qi LCD and use that for their “Google Hardware” Nexus devices but then also instantly allow access to the new screen technologies to every other Android hardware maker.

Source: pixelqi.com/blog1

Related articles

• Pixel Qi teases ultra-frugal Retina Display rival (slashgear.com)
• Pixel Qi: our new screen better, lower-power than new iPad (electronista.com)
• Pixel Qi promises retina-quality low power displays (liliputing.com)
• Next generation Pixel Qi screen said to have Retina display-like resolution, significant power savings (theverge.com)
• Pixel Qi promises tablet displays that meet iPad 3 quality – and draw much less power (venturebeat.com)
• Pixel Qi Says Next-Gen Displays Meet or Beat iPad 3 Screen Quality (hardware.slashdot.org)

You can discuss this and share it on Google+: https://plus.google.com/106075758531242552855/posts/YSLEdSYj5aj

Source: my logic/speculation and the Wall Street Journal

A full Chrome Browser in Android can be the key to see the huge market for ARM Powered Laptops explode.

Look forward to having a full ChromeOS-like Laptop experience on your ARM Powered Android Tablet as soon as you plug a Keyboard dock to it. Look forward to having a full Chromebox-like experience when you connect the HDMI output of your Smartphone to a PC monitor or HDTV and use a Bluetooth or USB Host Keyboard and mouse.

The main question is now to test the performance of the full Chrome browser on Android, I’d like to see its performance on the Galaxy Nexus that has the high memory bandwidth OMAP4460 1.2Ghz and 1.5Ghz processor. I’d like to see its performance on OMAP4470 1.8Ghz, and Tegra3 1.3Ghz. I think the Chrome browser performance on those Android devices can now be faster than on a Netbook.

I think everyone in every company should have 20% time to work on their own ideas, and successful ideas can then get resources and funding required to create new startups (within or outside of the companies that can decide to fund those new ideas), create more and better jobs, give people time to create the big projects that can make the world a better place. Isn’t it time for 20% time to become bigger than just Google?

In the following clip, Stan Lee, the creator of the CSI TV show franchise, talks about user generated content on YouTube.

The ARM Processors to be unveiled to support “The New Google TV Experience with Full Live TV Integration” are:

– Marvell 1500 (which I think I might have covered a few months ago nicknamed Project Berlin shown in a Zinwell prototype)
– Mediatek shows an ARM Processor for Google TV
– LG L9 is probably an ARM Cortex-A9 optimized for Google TV

TV makers to show new ARM Powered Google TV boxes at CES 2012 include:
– LG
– Sony
– Vizio

Might not yet be showing Google TV but probably are preparing to launch Google TV a few months later:
– Samsung
– Panasonic
– I expect Philips to replace their Set-top-box functionality with Google TV
– Sharp
– Toshiba

These ARM Powered Google TV boxes thus have the full Live TV integration mode supported. That means the ARM Processors are optimized to playback 1080p in 60fps, evt play 2 1080p video streams at the same time (picture in picture stuff), they support HDMI input and output at the same time, rendering overlay graphics on top of the 1080p video stream, controlling an IR blaster. I expect they also support all video codecs up to 1080p at full bitrates, I expect 1080p USB webcams are supported for HD video conferencing. USB host ports are supported to connect USB NTFS/EXT/FAT32 hard drives and USB sticks. Full Chrome browser web browsing on top of Android with Flash is for sure supported.

That means the ARM Processors used in Set-top-boxes such as Samsung Hummingbird, AmLogic ARM Cortex-A9 Single-core, ZiiLabs, Rockchip RK2918, VIA ARM9, probably those didn’t include the “Full Live TV Integration” support. My guess is some of those may also be working on customizing some ARM Processors to also support the Live TV HDMI pass-through features, while others I think may be waiting to support Google TV without Live TV pass-through. Possibly that those other ARM platforms need to wait for Google to open source this new Google TV source code before they can try to use the basic Google TV functionalities without Live TV pass-through. Perhaps Google will announce a Basic Google TV version to use on basic ARM Processors that aren’t providing the pass-through stuff.

For people who don’t use Cable, Satellite, DVB-T/C/S, for TV, there is no need for the HDMI input features of Google TV. We still want to have a more basic version of Google TV that offers every other feature and may provide it on cheaper hardware.

We’re talking a revolution in YouTube, a revolution in video-on-demand, a revolution in Democracy. Why and how? Simply because things are going to change and improve much faster as more and more people watch web video content directly on the TV in a leanback experience, and don’t watch the content in small embedded players on a laptop or desktop computer. Things change as more and more people will watch web video content instead of regular TV channels when in the living room. Things change when more and more people watch more political videos through the web, such as watching official campaign videos explaining policies instead of only the short sound-bytes on news channels leading up to important elections.

The most important factor that will make ARM Powered Google TV a success is the price. Marvell CEO said in his keynote at ARM TechCon 2010 that it only costs $25 to add this type of Internet connected Set-top-box functionality into a HDTV, and that it thus only makes sense that nearly all new HDTVs will quite simply integrate this right inside of them. It will be expected by consumers buying a new HDTV, that Google TV functionality will always be included for free and that it does not increase the price. I think all HDTVs will include an Ethernet port, some might include WiFi or just support it using any WiFi dongle on one of its several USB host ports on the side. As Eric Schmidt has said, by the middle of 2012, expect that most new HDTVs will include Google TV functionality for free. Expect ARM Powered Google TV set-top-boxes for $99 with Live TV integration and $49 without Live TV integration (no HDMI input, no IR blaster).

Source: googletv.blogspot.com

Related articles

• Marvell Chips to Power Next Wave of Google TV Devices (wired.com)
• Marvell’s ARM chips will power Google TV’s future (gigaom.com)
• New Google TV devices to pack ARM-based chips, not Intel (digitaltrends.com)
• Google TV officially adds LG to the fold, will demo new hardware along with Sony, Vizio (engadget.com)
• Google TV sacks off Intel, jumps to ARM (techradar.com)
• Google TV switches to Marvell’s new dual-core ARM SoC (linuxfordevices.com)

Expect all Gingerbread-capable devices be able to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich rapidly. The question is only how soon each ARM SoC can have it fully hardware accelerated? Who is doing that work of doing all the hardware optimizations? Who is eventually disabling or tuning down certain hardware accelerated advanced user interface features in the software if that hardware is not powerful enough or of lower performance?

As of course one can expect all the latest high-end Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 processors to support this soon, including all devices on the TI OMAP4, Samsung Exynos 4210, Qualcomm MSM8260/8660, Nvidia Tegra2 and Tegra3, St-Ericsson U8500/U9500 and more. Imagine how awesome it is going to be to see firmware updates upgrading all Tablets and Smartphones using following cheap SoCs to Ice Cream Sandwich:
– TI OMAP3630/3530/3430 ARM Cortex-A8
– Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8
– Freescale i.MX51/53 ARM Cortex-A8
– Marvell PXA618 Single Core
– Qualcomm 8255/8255T Single Core up to 1.5Ghz
– Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– AmLogic 8726 ARM Cortex-A9 Single Core 800Mhz
– NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Cortex-A9 Dual Core 533Mhz
– Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11
– Mediatek MTK6573 ARM11
– VIA 8710 ARM11

and more! Does anyone know how to get a confirmation from each of these ARM SoC providers to get an idea about how soon and if they expect to get full Ice Cream Sandwich support? Who is going to make that work, do each SoC provider, each device maker have to do all the work or is Google contributing a lot of those software optimizations already as part of the open source Android 4.0.1 code release?

How soon can we expect to find some awesome sub-$100 and sub-$200 fully capacitive, fully smooth Android phones, tablets running on the amazing Android 4.0.1? Can we expect them all now to be fully officially allowed to pre-load the full Google Marketplace, having the full Google-supported Tablet features, official tablet services pre-loaded, no questions asked? I expect Google’s new Ice Cream Sandwich Compatibility Definition Document to allow for every one of those SoCs full compatibility, even the cheapest, and not requiring any specific sensors, screen sizes, buttons, 3G features or other to get official Google Marketplace on those.

I expect that we may see Ice Cream Sandwich on all these SoC, even the ARM11 based ones, starting as soon as before the end of the year, or maybe in January or February of next year. I expect all cheap tablets and phones to run the latest Ice Cream Sandwich, all come with the official Google Marketplace legally pre-loaded, regardless of sensors present. I also expect either Android 4.0.1 or perhaps later coming Android 4.1, Android 4.2 to also provide full support for Set-top-boxes, Laptops, E-readers and more. That means, I expect this to provide a full Google TV experience on HDMI out. I expect this to provide a full Chrome browser when outputting a HD output and keyboard/mouse is detected. I expect this to provide the best ever user interface and applications platform for E-Ink and Pixel Qi based e-readers, powering a better reading experience.

Source: techmeme.com

Today is a great day for our collaboration with Google…The long-awaited Android 4.0 release is finally being revealed with the OMAP4460 processor powering the absolutely gorgeous Samsung Galaxy Nexus device. I am so excited about this launch. What I may be the most excited by is not only the ability to converge to one Android release for both smartphones and tablets, but to be able to pack that level of performance across graphics or video on an HD screen and within the power envelope of a smartphone device…This is where our OMAP smart multicore architecture makes a huge difference. At the end of the day, brute force (number of cores, for instance) does not rival sophistication.

and a further statement from TI:

Today, TI proudly revealed a major OMAP platform milestone: yes, the highly-anticipated Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” release runs on the OMAP4460 processor. This advancement is an exceptional demonstration of what OMAP processors uniquely do, and what separates them from competitors in the mobile processing world: the ability to provide hardware-integrated security, distinctive and advanced imaging features, enhanced memory and more, all on a smart multicore architecture.

Here are some of my impressions and expectations for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich:

– This means Samsung can maybe “easily” update processor speed to 1.5Ghz and maybe also later to the OMAP4470 1.8Ghz when those faster OMAP4 processors become available.

– I don’t know how fast Samsung can manufacture these screens and how much it costs them, my guess is this screen is the most expensive Super AMOLED yet, and I guess that Super AMOLED is already quite a bit more expensive than LCD and I wonder if Samsung is able to manufacture enough of these screens to not create major shortages for the availability of this Galaxy Nexus worldwide for the months to come. If there is one phone worth queuing up for if you want to be sure to get one in the first weeks/months at release, this may be it.

– They haven’t yet shown what happens when you connect to HDTV output, I wonder if the “pins” on the side provide HDMI and data output/input or/and if an MHL connector takes care of this like on the Samsung Galaxy S2. I expect the full Motorola Atrix type Laptop Dock, Desktop Dock, Multimedia Dock, all those features are likely part of Android 4.0, which is why I think Ice Cream Sandwich means the merger of Android with Chrome OS and Google TV.

– Samsung Galaxy Nexus is likely going to be expensive. This is not news though for high-end smartphones, those are all ridiculously expensive today. But that’s just how things are, and they are able to sell tens of millions at those expensive prices. Consider that you are paying $2000 to $3000 for this phone with a 2 year contract. Considering the possibility that Samsung may not be able to manufacture enough of those 720p HD Super AMOLED screens, they may even purposefully increase the price even further at launch.

–Motorola actually has ~$3.2B in cash (~$170M are “cash deposits”), with $200M more coming from Motorola Solutions, per the terms of the separation.
–They have $2.4B in deferred tax assets, that Google presumably plans to use (the media seems to be completely missing this one).

So, if you net the cash and tax assets, it’s more like ~$7B that Google is paying for the operating businesses and the patents.

Motorola Mobility has $6.2 Billion in assets (buildings and other stuff?) according to Wikipedia. Google gets 19 thousand new employees (up from 29 thousand current Google employees, a 65% jump in employee count).

Of course, what everyone is talking about are those 17 thousand patents and 7 thousand pending patents that Motorola Mobility has. Consider Motorola is a 80 year old company. Their patents most likely include many of the interesting Hardware Patents, I’m not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure strong Hardware Patents are worth much more than bogus software patents. This means Android, Chrome OS, Google TV can stay free and open source forever. Apple and Microsoft have to drop all their bogus lawsuits against Android companies immediately. Google now has the patent on the mobile phone, the Apple iPhone can be illegal tomorrow if Google wants it to be.

What do I think Google is going to do:

1. Ask the genius team behind the Motorola Atrix to join the Android team to make a platform that combines Ice Cream Sandwich, Google TV and Chrome OS into the ultimate ARM Powered device. Provide that solution as an all-in-one standard for the Android ecosystem and not just make it one product.

2. Interview any of the other 19 thousand employees at Motorola Mobility, ask who wants to work within Android, within Google or remain within Motorola Mobility and to do what. They can invent some genius interview process so somehow everyone gets what they want and what they deserve.

3. Maybe Samsung, HTC, Sony-Ericsson or simply the stock market are later offered to buy back the Motorola Mobility Hardware division without the patents but with free unlimited licence to use any of the patents on Android devices. In 6 months, if the stock market has somewhat recovered, Google may get all their money back for that.

4. Or Google can find use in owning Motorola, perhaps ask Motorola to design hardware such as Cheap $50 Android phones to bring Android to all people in the developing world, special focus on Brazil, Russia, India, China (potentially 1-2 Billion Android phones can be sold there in 1-2 years), Google can ask Motorola design $50 ARM Powered Google TV enabled Set-top-boxes that all consumers and all Pay-TV providers are going to use.

5. Maybe Android is mature enough (owning more than 80% of the smart phone market by the end of the year), Google may want to use Motorola to launch White Spaces networks worldwide for free wireless broadband for all. $99 Android phones unlocked that include unlimited free Google Voice, unlimited free wireless broadband in every city all over the world. White Spaces are unstoppable. Maybe this is the time. They can bundle a Motorola router with the phone, you plug it to your home ADSL/Cable/Fiber to expand that White Spaces network in your neighborhood.

Related articles

• $12 Billion: Why Google Is Buying Motorola Mobility (techland.time.com)
• Google to buy Motorola’s mobile unit for $12.5 billion (news.consumerreports.org)
• Google-Motorola Mobility would create interesting enterprise portfolio (zdnet.com)

Google wants to replace your wallet, your passport, your ID, to be used for ticketing, for local offers, coupons, deals and more. But is it secure yet?

We need this pin code mode and it needs to be fully 100% secure. But is it yet secure in this first implementation with NFC on the Nexus S 4G? Does Google yet use some type of deep hardware level security like the ARM TrustZone Mobile Payments platform?

We need this pin code screen to show up full screen, and there needs to be some kind of light diode indicator confirming that you are in 100% secure mode. That kind of pin code screen needs to come up to confirm every login, every payment, every money transfer. If they can do that in the way ARM is suggesting with TrustZone, this should make of this system a fully secured way to replace wallets, ID, Passports, tickets, coupons and more.

I want to login to my Google Account using my phone’s pin code security system. I want this system to replace all login username/passwords on the web. This system needs to become the new interface for a new type of OpenID system. Google released in February an SMS based secure login service that they offer to all Google Account holders today. But SMS is not seamless, it’s not really usable, the pin code screen needs to popup on your smartphone right there as you are trying to login, authenticate your access or to pay for something. That pin code authentication mechanism could perhaps be replaced by some kind of bio-metric authentication, or a kind of screen lock mechanism. Think of it like that calculator that you use for your security for your net banking, it needs to be the same integrated right into your phone.

Here’s the 1-hour video of this Google Wallet announcement, embedded to start at time-code 22 minutes (you can rewind and watch the whole thing if you want) where Rob von Behren talks about the NXP PN65 based Secure Element solution, which sounds like this is true hardware based security!

Related articles

• Google Wallet teams with Citi, MasterCard (go.theregister.com)
• Google Unveils Mobile Wallet Service (pcworld.com)
• Google Wallet coming soon to destroy your real wallet (geek.com)
• Google announces Google Wallet: Pay using your mobile phone (news.consumerreports.org)
• Google steps into mobile payments with Google Wallet, integrates with Google Offers (venturebeat.com)

Eric Schmid:
It’s a classic contest in high-tech. In that contest, you have a very well run, very focused, closed competitor who builds a great product that does something that is very usefull. That would be Apple. You have another competitor who makes all the technology available to everybody else, and using various creativity and various partnerships gets the benefit over everyone else’s creativity. Because there are more people involved in the open side of that, that side will eventually get more volume, have more investment, therefore have more creativity, more innovation, and ultimately the end user will choose the open one over the closed one.

Fareed Zakaria:
Except right now, the open one, all these tablets that are Android based, let’s be honest, they are not as good as the iPad and they are more expensive, which strikes me as unusual.

Eric Schmidt:
Which product will produce a lower cost product quicker? One manufacturer for a product or many manufacturers competing? The matter of fact is that we are just at the beginning of this fight. And the fight between two very well run, very large, very significant ecosystem companies, will ultimately produce great value for consumers because the fight between them will keep prices low, keep these systems honest and open and encourage the kinds of investments that people want to see. One of the greatest things about this contest is that people who win in this are the consumer.

(…)

There is pride in both approaches but they are completely different. In Apple’s case, they can continue to build beautiful and excellent products. The ecosystem that Google represents will continue and already has more volume, more users and will have more investment in the platform. Ultimately that will produce cheaper, better and faster products for everybody.

Posted by Fareed Zakaria on CNN GPS

for the price issue, Chandra said that Google has now qualified ARM chips to be used to run the Google TV software, instead of just the Intel Atom chips that currently power the Revue. Moore’s Law–the inevitable increase in chip performance driven by increasing transistor density–will push the performance of the cost-optimized ARM chips up high enough to compete with Atom, while helping drive down the overall platform price, Chandra said.

I have thus far video-blogged over 60 ARM Powered Set-top-boxes from all the consumer electronics trade shows over the past 2 years, most are running Android, all of which could in theory run the Google TV software.

Of course, it is up to Google to decide what kind of hardware requirements they want to enfore for Google TV on ARM, if they want those to only feature the full suite of HDMI pass-through features, meaning HDMI input and output, Infrared blasters (to change the channel on your cable/satellite set-top-box), USB hosts, Bluetooth and more, then that would disqualify just about all of the ARM Powered set-top-boxes that I have filmed thus far. I wouldn’t know how much more those hardware features require, and perhaps that requires an ARM Cortex-A9 at the minimum to run all the overlay user interface features and preferably 1080p at 60fps support at the minimum.

I think it is more likely and more logical that Google will decide to be as open as possible about Google TV on ARM, and thus support all the SoC that are currently being used and that will most likely be used. I think that means Google TV on ARM could work in “AppleTV/Roku mode”, meaning no HDMI inputs, just the Google TV experience of bringing the Web and WebTV on the TV on this separate HDMI port to your HDTV. That is why I expect there to be two kinds of Google TV on ARM:

1. Basic Google TV on ARM, this is HDMI output only, Bluetooth or RF/USB keyboards with mouse pad accessory can be used. This solution could work on 100% of the ARM Powered Set-top-boxes that I have filmed. And I believe this will be included turning every Android Smartphone/Tablet with Ice Cream Sandwich and every Tablet with Honeycomb 3.1 into a Google TV “for free”. See the Google Android Team’s response to my question submitted on the possibility of turning all Android devices into free Google TV devices when HDMI is used:

2. The Full ARM Powered Google TV experience, including HDMI pass-through, IR blaster, USB hosts, Ethernet, etc.. Since Chris DiBona answers to my question above “There’s all this other stuff that goes into a Google TV that isn’t in a phone”, well then, the Full ARM Powered Google TV will be that type that does it all. But that should not prevent an Android device with a basic HDMI output and not much else to still display many if not most of the Google TV UI features right there on the HDTV.

3. There is also a third scenario that I am envisioning, Google might use their Android Hardware division to plan out a new type of Multimedia TV Docking system for Android, using nothing more than HDMI, USB slave/host and evt MHL (that combines both into one Micro-USB connector). Basically the idea here is a cheap TV Dock that should work with most if not all Android Smartphones that have HDMI, USB (or MHL) to turn those into full Google TV, thus using the USB slave/host to transmit the right infos back and forward and feature in that Dock the right HDMI input and output, IR blaster, USB host duplicators, Ethernet connector, charging and more. The idea is a new Google Open Accessory design that could sell for $49 to dock any Android Smartphone with HDMI/USB or MHL and thus turn those into full Google TV. A solution which could evt also turn any ARM Powered Set-top-box into a full Google TV box also with adding the HDMI in/out, IR and more to those. Maybe it could be called the Google TV adapter, converter or extender.

Here’s the 56 minute session on some of the Google TV Honeycomb 3.1 upgrades and development tools at Google I/O:

Related articles

• 3 things Google TV needs from Google I/O in 4 days (armdevices.net)
• What to expect from Google I/O May 10-11th (armdevices.net)
• Impressions from the Google I/O Android Keynote, Day 1 (armdevices.net)
• ARM Powered Google TV by Samsung rumored by Bloomberg (armdevices.net)
• What’s Google TV’s Key Selling Point? (slashgear.com)
• You: What the New Google TV with Honeycomb Looks Like [Google] (gizmodo.com)

My take on it is that the Chromebook is the first serious challenger to Windows/Mac in terms of being installed in a mass market retail product. It’s the first ever mass market Linux laptop (after the One Laptop Per Child non-profit reaching 2.5 million children with Linux Laptops in the developping world since 2007). It’s the first ever mass market ARM Powered laptop. It can be configured to be the cheapest laptop to make, the safest, the fastest, the thinnest, the lightest and the easiest to use. Chromebook may be the first successful carrier subscription based laptop.

For Chromebook to sell more than Windows, here’s what I think Chromebook needs to be:

– $199 or less in an ARM Powered configuration
– Use Pixel Qi with ARM and you’ve got 30 hours battery runtime in a sub-1kg 11.6″ or 12.1″ super slim form factor
– They should subsidize these in partnership with the carriers to do a subscription model for normal consumers like this:
1. Sell it for $99 or less on a 2-year contract with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan
2. Bandwidth upgrades should be max $10/GB, $20/5GB, $30/10GB on-demand one-click
3. They can use carrier billing (thus carrier revenue share) for bandwidth upgrades, for cloud media subscriptions, on-demand, Chrome Web Store web apps and for all Google Checkout based online shopping
4. Provide an optional hardware upgrade once a year with contract extension. Used devices can be resold refurbished.
5. Provide 100GB or more cloud storage and full Google Apps for consumers with the subscription, offer guarantee of available of advanced web apps such as HD video editing (with many or most of the features of Avid/Finalcut), photo editor. And all these web apps must feel near instant to load and work offline, a web app should only need to get reloaded if it detects that there is a new version available. Gmail should load instantly for example.
6. Obviously, Google Voice and Google Music needs to be worldwide. They should also expand with a Google Video cloud storage. Basically they can allow people to upload 20’000 songs and 1’000 movies for free, the reason being, Google only needs to store one copy of each song or movie, and if the upload client (also on Chrome OS) detects that the file you want to upload already exists on Google’s servers in equal or better quality, it should instantly beam it to your account without actually requiring you to upload anything. Google should not care to try to filter out any “illegal” Mp3, Flac, DivX, MKV files. Eventually they can introduce unlimited music/movies subscription plans like Spotify/Netflix but they should aim at being able to include access to everything in those unlimited subscriptions, this might only be achievable through Government regulation of online content subscriptions.

If Google can deliver on those things and quickly, which is what I expect them to be able to do, then I think it’s obvious Chromebook could become the number 1 PC/Laptop OS as quickly as they became number 1 OS in smartphones since the Nexus One was released.

Can we expect to see some ARM Powered Chromebooks (or Chromiumbooks) at Computex in Taiwan at the end of May from all the Taiwanese notebook designers (Inventec, Pegatron, Wistron, Foxconn, Shuttle, Gigabyte etc..) who design upwards 90% of worldwide notebooks?

Related articles

• ARM Powered Chromebooks to be released soon (armdevices.net)
• Google ‘Chromebook’ focuses on enterprise push – Computerworld (news.google.com)
• Google aims at Microsoft with Chromebooks (ft.com)

Android Open Accessory Development Kit

Android@Home enables the Internet of Things.

The biggest announcement at Google I/O was the launch of the Android@Home Open Accessory Development platform. This is the platform for a whole new world of accessories and connecting everything through Android to the Internet. Suddenly, we are smart about all things and all things become smart.

Now we are not only talking about about connecting 7 Billion people to the Internet with Android Smartphones, now it becomes about connecting 100 Billion things through Android to the Internet.

Why the Internet of things? Why using Android?

The cost to add an ARM processor such as one of the ARM Cortex-M series, with sensors, switches and wireless connectivity in every appliance in your home may cost as little as few cents or a few dollars per device. It’s so cheap that as soon as an open standard is established and as soon as applications are planned out, all devices will get connected with this technology. Watch my video with Nuvotron NuMicro at Embedded World 2011 about the cost ($0.50-$2) and use of ARM Cortex-M0 32bit microcontrollers in all types of devices.

Here are some of the infinite amounts of uses for putting ARM processors in everything:

– Put a smart control in every lamp and the lights follow you, if you move to another room the lights automatically turn off, you save power. They automatically dim if they detect you’re relaxing or watching TV.

– Put a smart control in all your doors, in all your windows, in all your power outlets, integrated with your heating systems, water systems.

– Add sensors, ARM Processors in your pillow, blanket and in your bed, to monitor your sleep and wake you up at the right time between the right sleeping cycles. You’ll feel better the whole day and you’ll optimize your sleeping times. It’s more healthy, makes you more productive and saves you time.

The trick is that even as the Internet of things has been possible for a while, and even as prices to add smart controllers and sensors in each thing costs $3, people haven’t been doing much of it yet just because the control, management, interactivity systems around this have not been standardized and open yet. If you want to build the Internet of things it has to be built around you and for you and not among each thing and only for each thing. That is why Android is your interface into that world of things, and Google supports the open Adruino platform to enable these developments in an open industry. Android is the UI for the Internet of Things. Android is how you guide it, how you see it, it’s how you control your things.

Expect the next consumer electronics trade shows to showcase more and more ARM Powered things to connect with the Android ecosystem, look forward to an industry about to get really creative in how to use and feature that Internet of Things most efficiently.

ARM President Tudor Brown talks about the Internet of Things at the ARM Technology Conference:

Andy Rubin’s former co-founders on Danger (Sidekick, see these videos from 2004) Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt demonstrate and launch the new Android Open Accessory API and Android@Home platform at the Google I/O 2011 Day 1 Keynote:

IBM’s video on the Internet of Things:

Related articles

• Android@Home: Google Gets Serious About the Smart Home (nytimes.com)
• Google’s Platform Extends Its Reach With Android@Home (wired.com)

The advantage of an ARM Powered Chrome OS device is that it is thinner, lighter, runs longer on a battery and especialy could be sold for a lot cheaper. I’m expecting the ARM Powered Chromebooks to sell below $199 for them to become the new best selling notebook platform.

When are you showing the ARM Powered Chromebooks? Are ARM Cortex-A9 processors with lots of RAM fast enough today? What is the status of Chrome OS on ARM?

Please vote here now: http://goo.gl/Nybov

Retweet this: RT: @charbax Let’s get the Chrome team to answer about the ARM Powered Chromebooks: http://goo.gl/Nybov

What hardware requirements do you enforce for manufacturers to get access to the Chrome OS source code? Can anyone use Chromium OS today with the full Chrome Web Store on any hardware without asking Google for permission?

Please vote here now: http://goo.gl/mod/XAsv

Also feel free to add your own good questions to the Chrome team in that Google Moderator and post your question links in the comments so we can also vote for your questions.

Also watch the Android team’s response to Android being 100% open source (including all the drivers) (at 16m20s time code)

I understand the gigantic work involved for Google to write all the code, implement the programming APIs and everything else involved around Ice Cream Sandwich. Regardless of how quickly Google put together Honeycomb for tablets to have something ready at Mobile World Congress in February, I think it would just look wrong if for some reason we only have $500+ Android tablets based on Tegra2 made by a handful of priviledged companies somehow having any type of Honeycomb software on them for another 6 months. Given the amount of companies (nearly 375 of them filmed here), small to medium sized, who are investing their futures in making Android tablets, Tegra2-Honeycomb-exclusivity-until-Q4 would probably be quite scandalous. This is what I am expecting must be happening right now secretly with the Honeycomb 3.0 and 3.1 source code behind the scenes:

1. All “serious” tablet companies using all the major ARM Processors do have access to Honeycomb now, or will get access very soon. By “serious” company, I could mean the companies in which Google can trust not to leak the source code. That could mean that these “serious” Android tablet companies need some kind of a track record of being serious with this market.

2. Google should be transparent about which chip provider does have access to Honeycomb source code today, and which chip provider will get access soon. I believe all chip makers from at least ARM Cortex-A8 performance and upwards should be allowed to work on optimizing any current Honeycomb source code to work and timely be shipped with all the tablets that do get released with those specific chips in them. I do not believe that a Tegra2-only club for Honeycomb would be taken with a smile from the rest of the industry. All chip providers that have tablet makers showing products on the market and showcasing them at all the “serious” tradeshows today, including AmLogic, Freescale, Marvell, NEC/Renesas, Qualcomm, Rockchip, ST-Ericsson, Samsung, Telechips, Texas Instruments, VIA, all those should get that access and be able to ship Android tablets with Honeycomb in Q3 this year.

I’ve sent some of my Google contacts some questions regarding the actual status and plans for Honeycomb’s source code and support on the variety of ARM chip providers, while I am waiting for their reply, I wouldn’t know for sure what the actual happenings are behind closed doors before, during and after Google I/O in terms of officially supporting Honeycomb 3.1 on other platforms than just Tegra2.

Google needs to officially confirm that they are working with these ARM processors to support Honeycomb 3.1 in Q3 this year and I think that most Android tablet fans would be totally happy and satisfied:

– Freescale i.MX53 Cortex-A8 1Ghz
– Samsung Hummingbird ARM Cortex-A8 1Ghz
– Samsung Exynos 4210 ARM Dual Cortex-A9 1.2Ghz
– TI OMAP4440 ARM Dual Cortex-A9 1.6Ghz
– Marvell Armada 600
– Qualcomm MSM7227 ARM11 600Mhz 45nm with Adreno
– Qualcomm Snapdragon 8255 1.5Ghz 45nm
– Qualcomm Snapdragon Dual 8620 1.5Ghz
– Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 1.2Ghz
– NEC/Renesas EV2 ARM Dual Cortex-A9 533Mhz
– AmLogic ARM Single Cortex-A9 800Mhz

If Google has been and is cooperating with at least each of these SoC platforms, then I think we have no problem.

But if on the other hand, it somehow turns out that most of these alternative SoC vendors are somehow locked out of the Honeycomb party until finally getting source code access in Q4 and maybe not being able to release actual tablets with that code before Q1 2012, well then I think there will be some very angry people around the worldwide Android tablet industry.

Given the relatively big level of secrecy from all SoC vendors involved, I would like to interpret that as a clue that they must all be silently and cooperatively working closely with Google ever since before even the Motorola Xoom was released last February. And if they didn’t all have access already before last February, then hopefully they have all quietly gotten access or are getting access by now.

Google announced that over 100 Million Android Smartphones have been sold thus far. If 80% of those are sold on 2-year contracts generating revenues at an average of $1200 per phone over the 2-year contracts (in the US for example that number is most often higher than $2000), then that could mean Google’s Android has a huge influence on a global revenue of potentially more than $120 Billion, possibly over $80 Billion of which have been generated just in 2010 alone, with 2011 global Android industry revenues possibly clinching upwards twice as much as Smartphone growth is more than doubling every year. The Android Smartphone may be a $160 Billion industry in 2011 alone. Over $250 Billion in 2012 maybe. We are not talking peanuts. And with all analysts saying Tablets are the post-PC interface, Google may feel some type of pressure from the big guys of tech, not only the manufacturers but also the carriers (who are touching most of those huge Android related revenues), so it can be understandable that Google does things very carefully around Android, and to bring Android’s market share from 40% to over 80% in the next few months, Google may want to focus on top level secrecy in all of their cutting edge Android developments.

While I can understand that, and as a huge Google fanboy I want them to dominate over everything, but let’s see if we can get more informations on Honeycomb openness and the industry’s access to Honeycomb now under this Google I/O conference. I haven’t yet watched the Google Executives Q&A with Andy Rubin where some of the Android openness questions are answered, if anyone has the link to that video or any other related sources of informations please post those links in the comments.

If you are an industry insider and if you would like to tell me any secret information about the status of Honeycomb in the industry related to 3.1’s likelyhood to work on any or all of these SoCs during Q3 this year, you are welcome to contact me at [email protected] and if you want I can keep your name secret if you allow me to report here on your info.

Related articles

• Google tries to control Android fragmentation (armdevices.net)
• Google won’t open source fondleslab Android before ‘year end’ (go.theregister.com)
• From I/O 2011 – Confirmed: Honeycomb source will never exist on its own (geek.com)

Does Google support Honeycomb/Ice Cream Sandwich on CHEAP Android Tablets, all the $100-$300 ones using TI OMAP3/4, Rockchip, Telechips, NEC/Renesas, AmLogic, Freescale, Marvell, Hummingbird etc? Please explain timeline of full open sourcing/support

– Android team releases Open Accessory Development Kit, this probably means Open Hardware reference designs based on the latest ARM Cortex-M series microcontrollers and other ARM Processors. The idea is also with Android @ Home to enable users to seamlessly interact with a whole range of connected devices in the home, users can buy dozens of accessories for their Android, working over USB-Host, Bluetooth, WiFi (did they also announce some kind of other low-cost wireless networking technology? Some kind of RF?) Find more informations at http://accessories.android.com

– Google launches new Cloud Media Platforms for Movies and Music. Those are US-only for now (probably for licencing issues). I think Google should do folowing with their cloud media plans:

1. Take them global, if media conglomerates want to sue Google for going global, take them on, Google is big enough to never have to loose a lawsuit against any media content corporations.

2. Integrate with Spotify, Last.fm, Rdio and other cloud streaming services, this way Google can try to make the content deals, but they don’t have to, they can just re-sell or point their users towards integrating with those content providers that already have the regional deals.

3. Google should introduce Global Subscription Plans for each of the Google Marketplace categories, $5/month for unlimited music, $10/month for unlimited movies and TV shows, $3/month for unlimited apps, $5/month for unlimited games, $4/month for unlimited ebooks, $20/month for ALL-INCLUSIVE subscription plan, and make this global, work for all countries. All content providers can opt-in or opt-out, they should not care if the big content providers don’t care to join this disruptive subscription system, eventually, enough independents will be a part of this global subscription plan that the model will become the new standard. Google is big enough they can make the plan Mp3.com tried to implement 10 years ago actually work on a global scale for the first time.

4. If not enough content becomes part of the global subscription system, make it easy for pirates to import/upload all their pirated contents onto the Google cloud, with guarantee of privacy, meaning Google would never snoop on pirates pirated content or tell anyone about who might be pirating what. Just let everyone upload as many Mp3, DivX, MKV, epub that they want onto the cloud, Google can actually provide just about free unlimited storage for all, the reason for that is Google only needs to store one copy of each pirated file on their cloud. If they feel brave, their cloud upload client software can “beam” files instantly if Google detects that it already has this exact file or a better version of this file on their cloud.

I’ve briefly been able to speak with all 3 of these people on this picture over this past year at different conferences. Andy Rubin boss of Android Apple-killing, Vic Gundotra boss of Facebook-killing and Sundar Pichai boss of Chrome OS Microsoft-killing. All three of which are more or less Intel-killing.

Perhaps I will embed some kind of Google chat room together with the live video embed once things start today.

2. Support apps like BitTorrent/RSS, Seedbox management with SFTP, Rapidshare/Megaupload streaming, make it the easiest way to pirate all movies and TV shows with a remote control on the TV.

3. Unlock Desktop User Agent in the Flash plugin. The only reason TV websites can block Google TV is because of the Flash plugin not hiding itself as a Flash-for-Desktop user agent. It’s only a question of Adobe and Google making the decision (if the rights holders keep blocking them), they can make Google TV unblockable. Even make it easy to sign up for fast and reliable proxy services all over the world if certain online web TV are being region blocked (make it easy for the world to stream US based Hulu/Netflix/Viacom/etc, UK based BBC, French based France Television, etc..).

I expect that Google is going to announce all 3 at Google I/O. What do you expect Google TV 2.0 is going to be like?

I think the Google TV software needs to be in every cheap media player, in every set-top-box, and basically, it needs to make it easy for every TV user to easily get access to all web video in as few clicks and as little typing as possible. It may bring a keyboard into every living room, but that usage needs to be as seamless and easy as possible, start typing the name of the show and hit enter to tune in to that show, show options, live, on-demand, legal free/paid/ads if available, “illegal” BitTorrent RSS-subscribe Seedbox/SFTP-service-for-anonymous one click reliable add to queue. Another cool app would be Sopcast, and also the first use of Sopcast through seedboxes for “illegal” 10mbit/s or more live streaming of every TV channel in the world, basically make it as seamless as possible for people to cut the cable/satellite cord and replace it with full freedom of on-demand media choices if they so want to, all designed for leanback mode.

1. Honeycomb to get open sourced. While the first Tegra2 based commercial Honeycomb tablets have been released and are being released, I expect Google will announce the opening of Honeycomb and Google’s support to optimize it for all the ARM SoC platforms, all including TI, Qualcomm, Rockchip, Freescale, Marvell, Telechips, NEC/Renesas, AmLogic, all should be getting it! All must get it! If it’s a long shot to expect Google to announce their support for all ARM Processors, them open sourcing it sure will make it happen anyways. I expect that several of these major ARM SoC vendors already have been working on Honeycomb for a while, and they all may start their announcements around Google I/O timing.

This is a big deal because it is the first truely tablet optimized OS ever made. See my video interview with Matias Duarte a product manager on Honeycomb UI design at Google.

2. Ice Cream Sandwich to be shown for the first time. One of the reasons Google said they delayed Honeycomb open sourcing was to provide an integration of the new Honeycomb features that can scale down to Smartphone sized screens, and that also means to certain previous Froyo tablets which may not either be totally compatible with at least the initial Honeycomb source code. Basically, it may be Gingerbread with Honeycomb’s improved multi-tasking, improved widgets, improved web browser and more on top.

While Google will integrate the full optimizations for flashy impressive Dual-Core next generation super smartphones, I also expect Google to bring a light version of Ice Cream Sandwich suitable for Sub-$50 Android smartphones to reach 2 Billion more people around the world. See my initial video review of the $87 FG8 Android Smartphone that I found a couple of weeks ago in Shenzhen China.

3. Chrome OS to be released and open sourced. I expect a dozen Chrome OS notebooks to be released during the show, half of which to be ARM Powered, possibly using Tegra2, TI OMAP4 and possibly also the Qualcomm Snapdragon Dual-core, if not even more SoC to be demonstrated with Chrome OS installed. Google and ARM having optimized the V8 javascript engine on ARM, they should be achieving awesome speeds for multi-tab heavy javascripts and flash web browsing. Although that may require new optimized memory bandwidth on those processors for them to perform fast enough for all consumers not to notice any slow downs. The big deal is also for Google to demonstrate full offline functionality, even video editing, photo editing working perfectly offline and online in Chrome OS. They need to show very impressive 3D games support in Chrome OS. Other native code functionality in Chrome OS. They will announce the pricing schemes for consumers being able to buy those Chrome OS notebooks starting in June, price could be as low as $99 for a unsubsidized ARM Powered Chrome OS notebook, but they will unveil subscription plans at $10 or $20 per month to include HSDPA/LTE wireless bandwidth, the bandwidth that can easily be topped up for people who need more wireless data.

This is a big deal because it finally makes ARM Powered laptops a mass market possibility. Sure enough, Ubuntu 11.4 Netbook Edition is fantastic also on ARM, but Chrome OS will make Linux and ARM Powered laptops for the first time a reliable choice for the consumer buying laptops on the mass market.

4. Google TV 2.0 for ARM to be open sourced. This improved UI, with full Google Marketplace support. I expect it to work on all the ARM Processors, including even the cheapest platforms such as Rockchip, Telechips, AmLogic and more. I expect Google to fork two versions of Google TV, one Full and one Basic, the Full version doing all the advanced HDMI pass-through, overlay stuff and IR blaster, the basic version doing just HDMI out and WebTV only. If TV networks in the USA still want to block Google TV regarding it as their worst enemy and trojan horse, Google and Adobe will probably unlock full undetectable Desktop User Agent Flash support, making it impossible to block full screen Flash playback. Adobe and Google still may want to fight it over with the TV networks to get some kind of distribution deal still, but if their lawyers don’t come to an agreement, Google simply will be forced to unlock full access that cannot be detected in a full Desktop class web browser on the TV. Expect though Google to announce Movie distribution deals with all the major Movie production companies, at least for the USA. I expect Google TV 2.0 to be released worldwide. Pricing to start at $59 for an unsubsidized ARM Powered Google TV basic box.

This is a big deal because it makes the ARM Powered Set-top-boxes a useful mass market opportunity. Easy video-on-demand on the TV can change how people watch TV.

5. Google’s Social Network premieres. I am expecting them to come with the first really useful social network. Not some wall for stalking old high school connections, and not some for following famous people’s SMS messages, and not just the types of experimentations that were Wave/Buzz, but something now really useful to the point people will be using it to find new colleagues, find new friends, do new activities locally and far away, create new content in new collaborations, be productive socially but also enable a new type of fun through social, once they succeed this is going to be a big deal and will make people wonder why tech bloggers have regarded so highly of Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin/Friendfeed.

What do you think Google will announce by the Google I/O conference on May 10-11th? Post your ideas in the comments.

Chrome OS devices to be cheap

Neowin.net says sources confirm the first Chrome OS notebooks are going to be sold starting around late June or early July and the pricing might be innovative using subscription model tied with ones Gmail account.

The search giant is planning on using an unconventional form of distribution to customers. Google will be selling the devices as part of a subscription based model with Gmail to customers.

According to our source, Google plans to make the notebooks available for $10-$20 a month per user, and will provide hardware refreshes as they are released as part of the package, and will replace faulty hardware for the life of the subscription. On top of this, Google will make the devices available for a one time payment as a normal retailer would.

Here’s the type of pricing that I am expecting.

At retail without subsidy:

ARM Cortex-A9 Powered Chrome OS notebooks:

– $99 (10.1″, 2GB RAM)
– $149 (12.1″ or 13.3″, 4GB RAM)

Intel Atom Powered Chrome OS notebooks:

– $149 (10.1″, 2GB RAM)
– $199 (12.1″ or 13.3″, 4GB RAM)

Subsidized on 2-year subscription plan:

ARM Powered Chrome OS:
– 10.1″, 2GB RAM, Free with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan.
– 12.1″ or 13.3″, 4GB RAM, $49 with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan.

Intel Powered Chrome OS:
– 10.1″, 2GB RAM, $49 with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan.
– 12.1″ or 13.3″, 4GB RAM, $99 with $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plan.

How the 2-year subscription works:

– The $10/month/100mb or $20/month/1GB 3G/LTE data plans can easily get more bandwidth added to them through one-click bandwidth increase option in settings at a rate something like $1/100mb or $10/2GB type of increments, such extra bandwidth could be added and be used during a month after being added for example. Bandwidth addicts might spend a lot of money on a lot of 3G/LTE bandwidth this way.

– Google could sell these Chrome OS plans to Gmail.com and Google Apps users. The ARM Powered Chrome OS notebook might get 1 free hardware upgrade/exchange per year (with 2-year subscription contract extension), the Intel Powered Chrome OS notebook might allow hardware upgrade/exchange per year for a $99 payment (with 2-year subscription contract extension).

– Google might include a bunch of online storage with this subscription, for example 100GB, storage space usable for Gmail, Docs, Picasaweb and other upcoming Google Cloud Storage services. All data on a Chrome OS notebook (as well added through SD card or even USB hard drive) can automatically get synchronized with the Google cloud storage services. More storage can also easily be purchased in a one-click process.

– Also part of this subscription system, Google takes a consumers payment informations, either credit card or even direct bank account informations, and provides one-click shopping solution as well across all Google Checkout services. Thus monetizing more online sales and also making it easier for consumers to buy things online.

Things to consider about Chrome OS:

Consider an ARM Powered Chrome OS is super thin, super light, runs 10-30 hours on a battery depending on without/with Pixel Qi, consider also all Chrome OS laptops have larger screens, better keyboards, faster boot, faster web browsing speed, better web apps support, they are safer to use, unhackable, uncrackable, no virus possible, they are easy to replace as all data is synched on the cloud, but still HTML5 web apps will work offline, including even advanced apps like video and photo editing, they can even support all the most advanced 3D games. Consider also Chrome OS laptops can easily manage offline storage, either built-in, even hard drive slot or external USB storage and SD cards.

What do you think Google’s Chrome OS pricing will be like? Post your ideas and suggestions in the comments.

Related articles

• Google To Sell Chrome OS on a Subscription-Based Model? (thechromesource.com)
• Chrome OS Notebooks: By Subscription? (technologizer.com)
• Google to sell subscriptions to Chrome OS notebooks? (go.theregister.com)
• Google planning $20 Chrome OS hardware subscription option? (geek.com)
• Google to offer ChromeOS notebooks on subscription plan (teleread.com)
• Could A Google Subscription Service For The Chrome Notebook Computer Work? (lockergnome.com)
• Chrome OS Nears Release, But Where are the Netbooks? (pcworld.com)

Larry Page starts as CEO

He might quickly become regarded as greatest inventor/innovator/entrepreneur in the world. A modern Nikola Tesla, a modern Thomas Edison. I think Larry Page wants to be CEO so he can get credited for the amazing things Google is about to release:

– Android powering next 3 Billion smartphones/tablets to be released these next 3 years. Android dominating in tablets is also inevitable.

– Chrome OS about to be released as first real challenger to Windows on Laptops and PC. Advances with native code and 3D browser plugins will enable full desktop performance right inside the browser, offline support and full multimedia support also being there.

– Google TV, first set-top-box to be successful at bringing online video to the TV.

– Google Circles, the first real social network that will actually be more useful than for stalking and following famous people.

– Google Cloud storage expanded, with Google Music as part of the deal, users will be able to store terrabytes of multimedia data on the cloud for cheap.

– Google Books to actually launch, regardless of the publishers lawsuits, Google Books is inevitably just about to revolutionize reading.

– YouTube to take over majority of people’s daily TV watching hours. With Google TV as tool, algorithms for a perfect on-demand lean-back experience are coming. YouTube already accounts for more than 50% of worldwide bandwidth usage, but this will only increase. YouTube will likely soon become Google’s main source of revenues.

– Most adults might actually be using Google Apps as main tool for collaborative productivity. Google Wave features might get integrated to empower the real-time collaboration.

More revolutions Google might attempt to get to do :

– Revolutionizing the cell carrier industry. They may invest giant sums in developing White Spaces worldwide. To actually create a free wireless broadband network for all. Very disruptive to telcos.

– Revolutionizing fixed line Internet access through proving that cheap Gigabit/s Fiber to the home can get built everywhere worldwide.

– Revolutionizing energy production, helping to prove that solar, wind, geothermal can be built and used for cheaper than coal and nuclear energy.

– Revolutionizing education, through establishing more of the Khan Academys, enabling talented teachers get their teachings out to students worldwide simply through clever video production.

Sure, Larry Page will probably be humble and say that the work was actually done by the more than 24’000 Phd engineers working at Google. Yet he will be the CEO while all these things get released, upgraded and implemented. Having co-founded the company, he might just as well want to be in charge when all these new products are launched. I also think that he might know about the potential trouble that his competing companies like Apple, Microsoft, Intel and others might get by not being positioned effectively in the cloud computing world. If somehow Google turns out to the be the last Silicon Valley giant standing through the next potentially upcoming bubble, it will make him look even more impressive.

You can also see my post on the day they announced that Larry Page was going to be the CEO: What Google should do. Now.

What do you think Larry Page will do as CEO of Google starting today?

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, Gianfranco Lanci was fired (or resigned) as CEO of Acer. The official reason is that the board of Acer now thinks that they need to stop being a Wintel company and become more of an ARM/Linux embedded devices company.

This is part of the big wave of change in the industry that is happening across the whole range of ex-Wintel-exclusive laptop makers such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Apple, Toshiba and even Asus. All are moving away from Windows/Intel, and into rapidly re-focusing on making ARM and embedded Linux/Unix based devices. Here’s the reason why and Apple has been the biggest exemplification of this:

Profit margins:
– ARM and Linux can bring much larger profit margins to these companies. Instead of making 10-20% profit margins selling Intel powered laptops, these giants can make upwards 300% profit margins selling ARM Powered devices, like Apple does between the $150 BOM and $600 retail/consumer sales price of the iphone. The difference in profit margins are huge! ARM enables better distribution of profits among supply chain participants. In Apple’s case, their profit margins are 10x larger selling ARM Powered devices compared to the companies trying to compete in the Windows/Intel world.

Differentiation and design:
– ARM and Linux offers plenty more options, the giants of device making can put their engineers to work for the first time, in designing innovative, diversified and differentiated devices, to implement new amazing technology and at the same time have the possibility to aim at making a very significant fashion statement in the innovative designs that become possible. Apple is the ultimate example of this, their ipod/iphone/ipad are regarded as fashion examples, and the possibilities to set new trends opens up to everyone else in the industry. This is why the ARM and embedded code based product innovations are changing and improving much faster than Windows/Intel products. A giant of manufacturing always wants to be in control of their differentiation options, and not be locked into very limited reference designs and rules required to make Windows/Intel based products.

How hard is it to focus more on ARM? As previous anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel have shown, these companies try to enforce exclusive relationships with other big players in the industry. They go as far as to use predatory tactics, dumping price on components, dumping price on licences, in exchange for exclusivity and they do what they can to block out of the competition from gaining any significant market share. But ARM/Linux is reaching a point of leadership.

So it will be a very hurtful and perhaps violent moment when giants like Asus, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, all one after the other announce more and more devices based on ARM and free software such as Android, Google TV and Chrome OS, it hurts Intel and Microsoft. So while these ex-Wintel-exclusive giants don’t want to make it look like the start of a nasty divorce, they still feel forced to make the transition, and so you see them all bringing more and more devices, until like with Apple, more than 60% of their revenues and profits suddenly comes from ARM Powered devices, and until they suddenly all come to their senses and realize that ARM is the place to be, and they invest most of their R&D in creating differentiation in that ARM Powered world.

That does not mean nobody wants to make Windows/Intel laptops anymore. It just means everybody spends much more effort to make much more profits in bringing differentiated product designs in the ARM Powered world.

Related articles

• Wintel is dead, long live ARMdroid (armdevices.net)
• Acer DX241H, 24″ Monitor, Freescale i.MX51 Powered, comes with Chrome OS pre-installed? (armdevices.net)
• New Acer will be more like Apple, less like HP (engadget.com)
• Acer Sets Sights on Apple, HTC After Lanci Chase of HP Stumbles (businessweek.com)
• Acer pledges efforts to rebound amid slowing sales (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

On the phone with Arianna Huffington

I just got off the phone with Arianna Huffington. She likes what I do and has asked me to be the new Editor in Chief at Engadget.com effective immediately.

I told her I will do it under one condition, that they agree to rename Engadget.com to ARMdevices.net, all visitors going to the previous Engadget.com will be automatically redirected to the more future-proof ARMdevices.net brand instead.

Under my command, the site will only feature Benchmarks and Funny Videos. I believe that snarky news items are a waste of time. Any Engadget editor who owns an iPhone, who knows someone who owns an iPhone or who has been in an Apple Store during the previous 6 months will be fired.

100% of the posts will be ARM related, 10% of which will be Archos and ARM related, as I believe Archos is the best company in the world. Any negativity towards Google will not be tolerated, let them close Honeycomb and ban emulators if they want!

If anyone has a problem with this, you can send me an email.

Here I’m being interviewed with Arianna Huffington at the announcement event this morning here in Davos:

It is OK if Google enforces rules on Google Marketplace and the Google Apps to demand a one-click search engine or social network change, meaning the Bingdroids cannot lock users into only using Bing but that it must be a one click easy process to change the search engine to Google as default if that is what the user wants. Same thing with the Facedroids, one click should be available to move contacts out of Facebook.

It is great if Google’s purpose starting with Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwidth is to try to regulate the home replacements and manufacturer’s custom UI layers. Please make it default to allow the Android bloatware user interfaces to be turned off! I don’t mind if manufacturers think they absolutely have to make Touchwiz, Sense, Blur, Rachael or other, but they should all make it an easy to find one click process to restore default UI, they should all provide a one-click Android Vanilla switch.

The main requirement that I think Google has with Android, is that they have to make sure that everyone making Android devices with full native Android Vanilla UI and OS, must be allowed the Google Marketplace, especially the cheap Tablet and Smartphone makers, no absolute need for compass, dual-cameras or any other very specific hardware features, apps in Google Marketplace with very specific hardware requirements (a small minority) can easily be filtered based on the hardware detected.

Google must have teams working closely with all the ARM chip providers, Texas Instruments, Rockchip, Telechips, Samsung, Qualcomm, Marvell, Freescale, ST-Ericsson, VIA, Nvidia and more, and Google has a responsibility to make sure each of those platforms support the full Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Google TV and Chrome OS, as soon as they totally open source them in a month or so. That is what I expect Google is doing with their ARM chip provider partners. And that work on deep SoC optimizations level must also be coordinated with each of the serious companies using each of those SoC to bring Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Google TV and Chrome OS products to market in the next couple or three months.

If for some reason you hear that Google is not willing to give access to Honeycomb source code to any serious Tablet maker (with a reputation of releasing tablets that can be trusted, no minimum company size) or to any of these chip makers, that could be scandalous and would have to be brought to the attention of the blogosphere, so in case you hear about any of those cases please post in the comments or send me an email to [email protected] so that I can try to understand who gets access to the Honeycomb source code, when and exactly how.

Some people (especially Apple fanboys) have been complaining that Honeycomb tablets supposedly only have 100 apps HD tablet optimized yet. Those people should also mention that about 90% of the 250’000 Android apps are built with Android 1.6 Donut SDK or newer, and since then, most Android apps are built to scale to medium density screens, which means they work fine on tablets. That actually means, the number of apps that work fine on Android tablets is more something like 220’000 apps, more and more of which are being re-optimized for more than 800×480, yet still most of those scale to 1024×600 or 1280×800 just fine.

Also, I believe the goal of Google is to implement future versions of Android, perhaps including Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich already with a new system that auto-upgrades even the core parts of the OS, meaning that once devices are ready to ship with Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich, they may never really need to be firmware updated by the manufacturer, that core Android system upgrades could be done automatically and securely through the Google Marketplace. That would be a very deep anti-fragmentation move, and that would mean that all future Android devices would all be automatically future-proof.

Related articles

• Honeycomb source code and CDD delayed (armdevices.net)
• Honeycomb will work on cheaper tablets! (armdevices.net)
• What Google should do. Now. (armdevices.net)
• Arnova 10, $199 10.1″ Android Tablet (armdevices.net)
• Google puts Android on lock-down: Non-fragmentation contracts, standardized ARM chips, more (slashgear.com)
• Google tightening control of Android, insisting licensees abide by ‘non-fragmentation clauses’? (engadget.com)

Google should announce tomorrow that they invest $5 Billion in the Mars Direct 2016 mission (3 years ago, they made fun of the idea in the Google Mars Mission April 1st joke), $2.5 Billion now to Space X to develop the heavy-lift within 3 years. Google would publicly ask Microsoft and Apple to join in and each also invest $5 Billion in this. They can argue for it to their shareholders by saying 1) they can monetize the new patents that come of it 2) they can get each 1/3rd of all the advertising that can comes out of 7 years of live HD video streaming of the whole project. The number of years that this project will be under development, then launch and the 2.5 years of travel for the first crews. The live HDTV broadcast can be sent all over the world, they can recoup their investments just from the TV and live streaming advertising.

So now you’ve got $15 Billion from private US tech companies. The other $15 Billion can get paid like this, $3 Billion from EU, $3 Billion from China, $2 Billion from India, $1 Billion from Brazil/Japan/South Korea, $3 Billion from the US (Obama can do his Mars speech) and $3 Billion from the oil-rich Middle-east. The project would be an international technological collaboration, like the CERN LHC project, instead of a race.

Here are some of the reasons why I think US Silicon Valley companies should get bold and announce the financing of a major mission to send humans to Mars with 5-10 years:

1. These tech companies want to attract more scientists and engineers. The big investments means they can for example expand their R&D and combine it more with NASA.

2. These tech companies made unreasonably large amounts of profits these past few years and decades. If they all agree to spend the same large amount on this mission, that would not place one in disadvantage against the other in terms of how much of their cash is being spent. They owe it to society to give back at least for the scientific enthusiasm that it would generate for the world.

3. Those are basically investments in educations and universities. By those being US investments they would invest in US universities, all the Government has to do would be to open up for that H1B visa for all scientists and engineers from China and India coming in to work on that project.

4. The US army spends $1 Billion per day, for the price of just 4 days of war, they can fund their share of the worlds biggest scientific project, and arguably such a project can help to bring peace, as Humans can think bigger, look up to space, and think about life instead of fighting meaningless wars over limited natural resources.

Why am I a long time supporter of the Humans to Mars project and member of the Mars Society?

– I believe it’s worth looking for fossils or proof of previous life on Mars, would explain a great deal about why life appeared on Earth. This is the most fundamental question for Humans and should be the most important question to try to answer.

– Just the work put into the project will bring us new technologies to solve our Energy and Pollution problems.

– It will help solve our political problems, would be the strongest message for peace.

– Robots on Mars are awesome, but in 1 day, a Human Geologist on Mars can walk around and look through as much ground as the Mars Rovers did in the last 6 years. The only way we can realistically look for proof of life on Mars is by sending Geologists on the ground there and have them look for fossils and other proof over the period of 1 and a half years, which is the minimum time they would have to stay there anyways before being able to fly back to the earth, then it takes 6 months each way.

What do you think about the idea to send Humans to Mars as soon as possible? And why couldn’t the richest tech companies and billionaires not pay a significant part of it to get things going much sooner than politicians and their 4-year election cycles care to invest in on the longer term.

Michael Robertson, the enterpreneur behind Mp3.com, did a whole bunch of other cool stuff since. Including Gizmo5 bought by Google to add VOIP SIP features to Google Voice (I presume.. internationalization of Google Voice is still hopefully coming up), the Linspire Linux OS (formely Lindows, they had to change the name because of a Microsoft lawsuit) was online with an app store and 40’000+ apps 4 years before the Apple “appstore”, he also redid his Music locker idea at Mp3tunes.com

While I wish Google, Amazon, Apple all the best in licencing access to unlimited music streaming service and combine it with music locker for $1/song purchased songs, here’s what I would like these cloud storage for multimedia file services to be like:

1. Mp3 files, DivX files, MKV files, that are common, must be free to store. As the cloud service only needs to store one of each file, if you upload a pirated Mp3, DivX, MKV, Flac, then it should recognize it and not charge you for the storage. This way, people could beam Terrabytes of music, movies and TV shows to their cloud storage and not have to pay for any storage.

2. No need to upload the file if an uploading app recognizes the file as already being on the cloud. Then let it just beam the file to the cloud storage, and provide unlimited streaming from there.

3. Firm unbreakable promise that the cloud service providers are not going to hand over the index of all the pirated files to RIAA and MPAA. What would be the point in showing those copyrights holders what you pirate.

4. Cloud services need to provide one-click export/copy to another cloud service, meaning they can talk directly to each other, even share the files efficiently across all the cloud services.

5. The cloud service providers, perhaps with help from the Government, need to implement global content subscription plans, around $10 per month should give unlimited legal access to all Music, Movies, TV Shows, Ebooks and Applications. If everyone in Europe and the USA paid $10 per month, that would amount to $60 Billion per year, plenty enough to pay for all the content creators directly, no DRM needed, no separate subscription plans needed, one plan should provide legal access to everything, and piracy can get legalized.

6. The cloud storage services can smartly integrate with P2P networks if needed, to facilitate mass distribution of all the huge files. Eventually do something similar to Wuala, or they could simply implement BitTorrent and smart BitTorrent caching systems in cooperation with all the ISPs. The idea is this, the cloud distribution system must be able to manage that 1 million people want to download the same 4.5GB 720p MKV movie file at full speed all at the same time, eventually download it in a way it can be played back while downloading (p2p streaming).

What would you like to see the cloud service providers do to provide better cloud storage for multimedia file streaming?

Related articles

• Amazon launches cloud storage service (theglobeandmail.com)
• Amazon Cloud Player streams music from your free Cloud Drive to Android and the desktop (downloadsquad.switched.com)
• Amazon beats Apple and Google with cloud music launch (telegraph.co.uk)
• Amazon’s New ‘Cloud Drive’: Your Music, Everywhere You Go (wired.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Yes! Well, I just put this out here, as a rumor. What do you think?

Here’s what I think Samsung is doing, preparing a super thin Exynos 4210 ARM Cortex-A9 based laptop for summer release, running Chrome OS nicely and 10+ hours battery runtime even as it weights less than a kilo.

Here’s what I think Sony is doing, preparing a super thin Nvidia Tegra2 ARM Cortex-A9 based laptop for summer release, running Chrome OS nicely and 10+ hours battery runtime even as it weights less than a kilo.

Best kicker out of all this? MSRP for these should be below $199 unsubsidized for the whole chew-bang. Those could even be sold $99 subsidized yet not even requiring a contract but just using month-to-month 3G/LTE data as a service (for example, just requiring that the user pay the first $100 in data credit in advance, could be enough for 5 months of $20/month/2GB data service packages, using more than 2GB/month on cellular and the user would have to pay more at a rate of $10/GB on demand or just use the Internet over WiFi or Ethernet for free). Include a 1280×800 Pixel Qi screen, and the battery runtime instantly could increase to upwards 30 hours and the whole experience be sunlight readable.

Of course, Toshiba, Dell, Acer, Asus are all also working on this. And all the Texas Instruments OMAP4430/4440, Marvell Armada 610, Freescale i.MX6 and even Nvidia Tegra3 are also going to be among the choices used in these devices.

Obviously, Apple is investing a farm in preparing their first Apple A5 ARM Cortex-A9 powered OSX for ARM Powered Macbook mega-slim, and Microsoft is investing a castle in making Windows 8 for ARM ready on time so they can try to convince ARM Powered laptop makers to just use Windows as a Chrome OS or Ubuntu alternative.

How quickly do you think ARM Powered laptops will dominate the laptop market? Post your opinions in the comments.

Related articles

• Sony crafting VAIOs with Chrome OS, external GPUs and Thunderbolt tech? (engadget.com)
• Google ships last Cr-48 laptop ‘for now,’ partner Chrome OS devices still on track for summer (engadget.com)
• The Cost of Chrome OS: How About $250 or Less? (technologizer.com)

The search giant says the software, which is tailored specifically for tablet computers that compete against Apple’s iPad, is not yet ready to be altered by outside programmers and customized for other devices, such as phones.

“To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs,” says Andy Rubin, vice-president for engineering at Google and head of its Android group. “We didn’t want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut.”

Rubin says that if Google were to open-source the Honeycomb code now, as it has with other versions of Android at similar periods in their development, it couldn’t prevent developers from putting the software on phones “and creating a really bad user experience. We have no idea if it will even work on phones.”

Here is my opinion on this:

As long as Google releases the full Honeycomb source code within a month or so from now, and hurry up to confirm (even sooner) that the updated Compliance Definition Document for Honeycomb will open up to allow many more smaller manufacturers (such as Archos, Rockchip, Telechips, ARM11 and many other small tablet makers) access to the full Google Marketplace (that can provide filtering), then all will be good.

One can expect Google to synchronize full open source release of Honeycomb, Google TV and Chrome OS by the Google I/O conference coming up on 10-11th May or before.

What is your opinion on Google’s Honeycomb source code and updated CDD release delay? You can write in the comments.

Here are the first few details as reported by bestofmicro.com from what they heard at Archos investors meeting today about the Gen9 tablets (what’s in bold is from the report, the rest of following text are my added speculations and guessing):

– ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core 1.6Ghz, it’s the fastest processor in a tablet ever unveiled thus far. I expect this to be a customized Texas Instruments OMAP4440, but that is only because I guess Archos will continue their long time partnership with TI that they’ve had for over 10 years now.

– New innovative 3G modem. Yup, we’re getting 3G (at least as an option). What kind of 3G? How they implement it? I dunno, it seems they have a new special way of doing it? I hope they do it with some kind of modem module that can be added or swaped, thus making the tablet compatible with all types of cellular networks current and future and making production and distribution easy, anyone think it could be a module? Somehow allowing for space for a standard USB 3G modem on an “internal” USB host could also be a very innovative way to simply add 3G to the devices, the back of the device could “simply” have some space available to insert any standard compact 3G modem such as the Huawei or ZTE 3G usb dongles that anyone can buy everywhere for as little as $20 unlocked.

– 6 sizes from 5″ to 10″. That’s the sizes it seems they are aiming at. It might mean Archos noticed their 7″ and 10″ Gen8 were much more popular and in demand than the smaller sizes, and it might mean Archos is realizing a tablet has to be at least 5″, perhaps they leave the smaller sizes to the Arnova line? I expect/hope all are capacitive, even the 5″ one. Likely sizes are 5″, 7″, 10.1″, other possible sizes (since there are 6 sizes planned), 9.7″ 4:3 aspect ratio, 5.8″, 8.9″, 8″ 4:3 aspect ratio. I also hope Archos and Pixel Qi can synchronize release schedules so Archos can provide Pixel Qi matte capacitive screen option on all these sizes, at least as an option. Would you pay $50/$100 extra for Pixel Qi if Pixel Qi is not yet fully mass produced? One can hope Pixel Qi is fully mass produced in time, and that somehow Archos sees the opportunity in using it accross the line, thus making Gen9 ready for productivity, ready for real reading, ready for outdoor use, ready for use in professional and study situations, ready for serious collaboration on text annotations, ready to be Kindle-killer and iPad-killer all at the same time.

– All are Android, obviously it has to be Honeycomb (source code for Honeycomb has yet to be released in the open by Google, it should be done any day now), can Google finally open up Android and allow value Archos tablets the full Google Marketplace access? I would expect so, that could hopefully allow Archos to be certified. (this is totally up to Google is my guess)

– Archos says they continue to focus on aiming for the medium range pricing. My guess is it likely stays below $300, but if they do 3G, Pixel Qi and if they are first out with OMAP4440, who knows, perhaps the price might sneak up to something below $400. Archos CEO is planning all this based on offering the best possible value they can, my guess is that they aim to stay below $300 for the basic models.

– They continue to make hard drive versions. Reason being hard drives provide much more storage at much lower cost. My expectation is at least some of the 6 sizes will have hard drive options. Capacity can depend on how thick they can accept that hard drive to be, cause 2.5″ hard drives can go up to 1TB as far as I know, but those are probably too fat. So 250GB for sure, 320GB and 500GB again maybe, if the 320GB or/and 500GB are available in super slim mode.

Well that’s all they have teased for us for now. What other features are you hoping Archos is preparing for us in the Gen9 tablets? write in the comments. You can also comment in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=43708&p=337531#p337531

Sources: http://www.archos.com/corporate/investors/financial_doc/ARCHOS_2010_Results_en.pdf, http://www.bestofmicro.com/actualite/28876-Tablette-Android.html

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There are some rumors and speculation that Nintendo might unveil Wii2 at E3 in June. Here’s what I think Nintendo should do:

1. Sell it for $99 as an ARM Powered set-top-box

2. Use ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core or Quad-core with future proof 1080p graphics, even support 1080p 3D output.

3. Little integrated storage, but include SD card slot(s) and support USB Host for external hard drive storage.

4. It’s a Blu-ray player, but all the games should be downloadable and stored on SD cards or USB hard drives.

5. Nintendo should start unlimited games subscription packages, games are downloaded from the Internet, eventually even use BitTorrent, synchronize also unlimited games onto the Nintendo 3DS and using new official Game Cart for previous Nintendo portable and home consoles. The main problem with this is the disruption of retail stores and the ways they promote the sale of video games. But it’s a change Nintendo has to make. $10-$20 per month in a subscription should give unlimited access to all past and future Nintendo games for home and portable consoles.

6. Wii2 should run Google TV software in my opinion, so it also doubles as the best HDTV VOD Set-top-box, so it disrupts regular TV programming, Nintendo can turn everything to on-demand entertainment in the living room.

7. All previous Nintendo games can be updated online, and can receive new online gaming modes.

8. Built-in HD video conferencing, might require additional HD usb webcam.

9. The Wii2 creates a WiFi hotspot to interact automatically with the 3DS/DSi/DS, and includes Bluetooth also for remote controls, including also a bluetooth keyboard and a bluetooth headset.

10. New innovative virtual reality gaming mechanisms, might add Kinect-style 3D cameras, but more likely, new Wii game controllers, new gloves and even detectors on feet for a full virtual reality experience. Maybe they integrate sensors like the Freescale MMA9550L in their new remotes and compact body sensors. Some type of glasses with two IR emitters perhaps as well using this trick.

11. The size should be barely larger than a dual CD case. With Blu-ray player in there, HDMI output (possibly HDMI input/throughput also for full Google TV like features and easy setup), Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 host ports, new TV sensor ports.

Which ARM chip provider could get that deal with Nintendo to be mass produced into Wii2? Could it be Nvidia’s Kal-El, OMAP4440, i.MX6, Marvell’s Tri-Core, Qualcomm’s Quad-core? What do you think Nintendo should do for the Wii2? Write in the comments..

Related articles

• Nintendo Wii 2 at E3 hints EA boss (slashgear.com)
• EA dubs Nintendo Wii a ‘legacy platform’ (go.theregister.com)
• Wii reaches 35 million sales, earns new record (Wii) (gamesradar.com)
• ‘Wii’s Time Has Passed’ – Strategy Analytics (businessinsider.com)
• High Voltage details their hopes for a Wii successor, Wii looking a bit ‘haggard’ (gonintendo.com)

The ipad 2 line in Houston, TX as reported by Engadget.

Blame the analysts, unless they see lines, they think Apple isn’t selling any products.

This launch was engineered to generate lines (no pre-orders, 3 week waits if ordered on line…) and lots of free publicity…

Comment by Ghostbear1 in that Engadget article.

the scarcity principle is the mother of all marketing techniques (…) We generally perceive that things that are difficult to get are typically better than things that are easily available. If everyone wants it then it must be good right? This actually taps into the principle called social proof

Source: salescrunch.com

Queuing up for a piece of gadget is a really weird concept. In theory, especially for Apple, those devices are mass produced in gigantic proportions in the biggest Chinese factories, somehow Apple would not be able to manufacture enough to sell to whomever would want one?

This whole lining up deal is a situation designed by Apple’s viral marketing department.

This carefully choreographed gadget marketing/pricing ballet has turned Apple into the second largest company in the world, just 3 and a half years after the release of the iPhone. It’s really insane if you think about it. If not for the largest oil company in the world Exxon Mobile, Apple would be the largest company in the world, and most of Apple’s current profits and revenues come from their ARM Powered iOS devices, especially the iPhone.

So now Apple is doing a big push on the tablet market with iPad. And the iPad2 certainly has a nice Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor in there.

There are Android tablets like Archos 101 Internet Tablet released 6 months ago, that are lighter at 480gr vs 600gr, that have real mini-HDMI outputs built-in, real USB-host built-in, a real kick-stand built-in, and that still support more video and audio codecs (such as all DivX, MKV found on BitTorrents), with Flash support, real multi-tasking for 40% to 60% cheaper price than the ipad2.

In my opinion, Honeycomb is the first real Tablet OS. And I am pretty sure Honeycomb tablets will overtake iPad market share in less than a year, faster than Android overtook iPhone after the Nexus One release.

For some engineering resource/time allocation/prioritisation issues, Google chose not to allow much to happen with tablets with Donut, Eclair, Froyo and Gingerbread. Companies like Archos were left with the open source part of Android, doing the customizations they want, but for some strategic reason, they were left without the full support from Google. Google didn’t want Android Powered iPad and iPod Touch competitors to dominate the market in 2010. They thought they perhaps were busy enough dominating smartphone growth of that year, and gaining the full support by two dozen Smartphone makers in the process.

I think Google’s strategy is to simply let the Apple viral marketing people do their thing first, then get their better open and free software in gear, and riding on Apple’s viral marketing coat-tails, Google’s Android ecosystem can then provide the big push and rapidly dominate.

This is also a dance of technological disruption, and disruption of those disruptors. Google can’t be seen as encouraging the industrys too rapid change, while some companies bet their futures on the Open Handset Alliance, Google had to be careful and let the market move as fast as it can without hurting the feelings of the big partners who invest billions of dollars in this and want to see their investments safely recouped.

In any ways, look forward to the Android Honeycomb ecosystem taking care of making Android the top platform for tablets fast, and look forward to new designs to make tablets even more fun, more productive, and basically turn these gadgets into the user interface of the future of mobile computing for all the people of the world.

At the same time, something awesome is going on with Google and Sony vs Cable Networks and the Movie industry at the FCC. Arstechnica published this awesome article explaining how Google and Sony are supporting an FCC regulation called the AllVid system.

The trade association is trying to set limits on how easy it will be for devices like Google TV to access pay TV content and reassemble it into something that will reconfigure both television and the Internet.

That’s at the heart of the FCC’s proposal for an AllVid system, which Google very loudly supports. AllVid doesn’t exist yet, but the idea is to mandate an industry-wide gadget that you could plug into your broadband router and connect to your cable TV provider, then watch online video and pay channels through a variety of AllVid-friendly devices. Not surprisingly, Google and Sony love this idea, because it could transform the Google TV from just a neat product into a revolution.

Big cable hates the proposal, because that revolution could leave multi-video program distributors (MVPDs), if not in the dust, at least working in a far more competitive video environment.

Basically, what this could mean, is that content would be separated from technology. Content owners won’t be able to make exclusive streaming partnerships with one set-top-box maker and not be available on the other. What this means, is that Hulu and Netflix must be available on all devices and that there will be a standard user interface to access all those on-demand and streaming contents.

This probably also means that all of those TV Networks in the USA who are streaming their TV shows for free using ads from their websites, would have to provide all that content to all devices through standardized user interfaces. None of these content providers can choose to block any device from accessing any content, and the advertising and pay-per-view models will thus be standardized.

Big cable insists that the metadata used to create on-screen program guides is copyrighted. The Motion Picture Association of America protests that the AllVid idea would put studio content painfully close to sites like The Pirate Bay.

Program guides should not be copyrighted, that is ridiculous. Anyone should be allowed to list what is going to be on TV at any given time. And anyone should be allowed to list movie titles, directors, actors, plot and even display a poster for each of those contents.

The MPAA is correct, this will mean that pirated content will also just be one click away, but that will force content owners to allow for seamless access to all the contents either for free with ads or at very reasonable cost as pay-per-view. And this will also enable the next step for Government regulation, that is to standardize the all-you-can-eat subscription model so that one Global Licence cover the legal and free access to all contents.

Related articles

• ARM Powered Google TV confirmed (armdevices.net)
• The technical reason TV Networks can block Google TV (for now..) (armdevices.net)
• Hollywood: Google TV would put us in same ship as pirates! (arstechnica.com)
• Can cable block the Google TV revolution? (arstechnica.com)

Source: archoslounge.net

As I run the biggest Archos fansite community at http://forum.archosfans.com and I have been publishing the earliest and most popular video reviews of Archos products for over 6 years, publishing the earliest and most popular videos of Archos full Tablet line such as the 70 Internet Tablet, 7 Home Tablet, 101 Internet Tablet, 32 Internet Tablet, 43 Internet Tablet, I may be biased. But I am sure that if all stores had enough Archos in stock to satisfy the demand for tablets over these past 3 months, Archos would sell even more than Apple.

What matters to the consumer is the value proposition. What features they can get for what price. Archos newest Gen8 Android tablets are about half the price of the iPad and provide more features.

Here is what needs to happen for piracy to dissapear:

Everyone pays $5 per month to access everything. Everyone is then allowed to watch, download, stream any movie, tv show, music, ebook, blog post, download, install and use any application.

This has been called the Global Licence by French socialist party in 2005 when they tried to pass it through the French Parliament (but the law was then cancelled by Chiraq’s Government). I was since then a strong supporter of the Global Licence model and I even campaigned through video-blogging 450 videos for Segolène Royal’s presidential election campaign in 2007 in France to try to get this law passed in one major European country, which would likely then trickle over to be the standard online content law, the copyright/piracy fix for the world, a foundation allowing for the creation of much better content and a solution allowing for development of much better technological solutions to more easily consume all the best content.

The Netflix model may seem great on the surface, but the reality of a technology provider having to sign content distribution deals with all the content creators in the world is just not a sustainable model. There will be plenty of content creators who will have demands that Netflix cannot meet, and that means a lot of content is then not going to be available in certain markets. Having many separate and closed subscription plans is not a sustainable model.

The only true solution is a Government mandated blanket licencing pricing and redistribution model, thus the global licence tax, where everyone pays a small tax to legally access all contents.

$5 per month paid by everyone in the USA and Europe means $60 Billion per year in revenues through this model, that is probably largely enough to finance great content creation. The redistribution of this wealth would happen through decentralized and multiple measurers of popularity and quality of content. For example, Google can measure exact popularity and quality of YouTube videos, last.fm can measure how many times people listen to songs, Razorback and other p2p statistics systems can measure popularity of files on p2p networks. More such models of measurement of popularity and quality/ratings can be implemented once having such more precise statistics and ratings will be demanded.

The advantages of this model:

– The money can be distributed directly to content creators, skipping all intermediaries. The content creators thus are in control of their budgets, content creation is thus less influenced by the intermediaries.

– Technology providers can focus on providing better technologies instead of having to worry about acquiring rights for content. Technology providers can sell or monetize their solutions based on the cost of bandwidth and storage rather than having to monetize through complicated models.

– Consumers don’t have to think about where they can find which content based on who has the rights to distribute it. Consumers can just make a search for what they want, and they can download or stream it through any number of technology and solution providers.

Picasa, YouTube and now also Google Art Project, all cloud services that are ready for Quad HD and beyond!

The usage scenario is something like this, have a slideshow of your favorite art from around the world displayed in Quad HD resolution in your living room sub-$1000 46″ Quad-HDTV.

Anyone with a 3megapixel photo camera or higher creates photo content suitable to be viewed on a Quad HD screen.

Anyone filming with upcoming RED cameras or other consumer camcorders to come that record 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K or more, all those deserve to be seen on Quad HD screen, and can be streamed from YouTube even!

Screen and Projector industry, please take this advice: Give up on 3D as soon as possible and make us some Quad-HD, 4K2K screens and projectors at the same cost as 3D!!! All it takes is a new faster processor to process the higher resolution!

Here are some of the Quad HD screens I saw at conferences during the past few years, every time I see content on a Quad HD screen, I am blown away:
JVC 4K2K Camcorder and TV at CES 2011
Samsung 3840x2160p 82″ LCD HDTV at CeBIT 2008
JVC 4K2K HDTV and Projector at IFA 2008

Related articles

• JVC KY-F4000 – JVC shows new 4k and 8k cameras. (frankglencairn.wordpress.com)
• World’s greatest art galleries now on Google Street View (telegraph.co.uk)

– Samsung’s ARM Cortex-A9 Orion processor with ARM Mali-400 graphics in Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Galaxy Tab2. Is it a 32nm process design already?

– Freescale to show first i.MX6 ARM Cortex-A9 reference board or even announce actual devices using it?

– Texas Instruments OMAP4 in actual products, more than just RIM Blackberry Playbook. I expect several phones and tablets will feature the 1Ghz OMAP4430 to be released by end of Q1 and they will probably show and announce devices with 1.5Ghz OMAP4440 for later availability.

– Google shows Honeycomb. Not just videos as they did at CES, but they actually allow everyone to play around with the UI. They should announce Google Music, an expansion of Google Voice for worldwide free VOIP usage. Honeycomb should bring open Google Marketplace for all tablets, for all devices, even laptops. I am hoping Google even announces Honeycomb for Rockchip, Telechips, MSM7227 as well. Honeycomb may be synchronized with the launch of Google TV on ARM as well, or at the least, Honeycomb Google Marketplace should work for Google TV screens. First showing of Chrome OS for ARM Powered laptops would be appropriate as well, full hardware acceleration demonstration for HD web browsing on all the ARM Cortex-A9 processors would be appropriate.

– Texas Instruments nHD Pico Projector could be demonstrated in several upcoming smartphones. Adding a built-in projector will be one of the coolest features of a modern smartphone.

– ST Ericsson U8500 ARM Cortex-A9 ready in Nokia’s next generation smartphone and tablet devices running Meego. But I also expect Nokia to announce and show a whole range of Android devices which I expect have been under development for a year.

– Nvidia to launch Tegra 2 1.2Ghz 3D edition with full 1080p all codecs high profile playback, faster multi-tab HD web browsing processing and they’ll announce and show some Tegra3 stuff as well.

– Qualcomm MSM8660, 8260 to be launched in range of new smartphones and tablets. This is Qualcomm’s big Dual-core Snapdragon processor design push. It may be huge and Qualcomm may dominate Dual-core smartphones as well.

– Marvell 628 Tri-core demonstrated in devices. May be the appropriate timing for them to show demos? Marvell in any case is powering the best example of ARM Powered laptop in OLPC XO-1.75 that should be shipping mid-year, and they certainly have some ambitious Marvell Armada XP ARM Powered server projects going on.

– Rockchip’s partners launch more RK2918 devices. Suitable for low-cost ARM Cortex-A8 tablet designs.

– New Telechips TCC8803 ARM Cortex-A8 designs for other low-cost tablet designs.

– It would be nice to test some Windows 7/8 ARM demonstrations. Microsoft can do a good job porting all the apps and fixing up all the necessary drivers. Let’s see what they have! It would be a nice surprise, but I don’t expect Microsoft to precipitate things too fast.

– Motorola releases Atrix 4G and Xoom by the show start. First Tegra2 phone that does it all and first Honeycomb tablet, so it will be fun.

– HTC releases their next generation Android phones and a tablet. It’s their replacement for Nexus One/HTC Desire/Droid Incredible. My wild guess is it could be based Qualcomm MSM8660 dual-core and include a HTC Tablet as well.

– RIM Blackberry demonstrates support for Android apps on the Playbook tablet. This way, they skip the need to start a whole new app marketplace from scratch.

– HP launches WebOS devices. Let’s see what it can do. I think HP will probably have to use Android though eventually. Hey, competition is always nice, but sometimes when a good open-source platform is free, everyone can just as well contribute to that same ecosystem and if anyone thinks they can make things better, they can fork it or demand the improvements implemented at the level of the Open Handset Alliance. HP did a beautiful ARM Powered laptop before in Compaq Airlife, I’d like to see them upgrade that with Qualcomm MSM8660 Dual-core platform and Honeycomb software.

– I’ll be looking for any demonstrations of platforms such as the Broadcom BCM2157 to enable cheaper Android phones. Sub-$100, how soon, how good.

What do you expect from Mobile World Congress? What would you like me to film in priority? Which questions should I ask to whom? You can also send me tips on what I should film at MWC to my email: [email protected] Do you agree or disagree with any of my expectations? Post in the comments.

Today, the carriers decide

The main reason Android dominates today is that carriers pay about $200 less per customer on an Android phone compared to an iPhone (about $400 vs $600). The other aspect of Android that carriers like is the customization of it to make more money on extra services. For example, Google provides the carrier with a share from app sales in the Google Marketplace. Carriers can pre-load the devices with apps for on-demand music and videos and other services. Apple does not give carriers any share of revenues from the App Store or iTunes.

The actual bill of materials and manufacturing cost of today’s high end Android smartphone or iPhone is less than $150. Amazingly, the average US smartphone consumer pays above $2400 for his smartphone on contracts, for example, Verizon’s Average Revenue Per User is $105/month. ARPU is lower in Europe, and much lower in developing countries. The carrier economic aspect of Android winning is only how things are today. Even as there is competition with very good high end Android smart phones provided to the market by Samsung, Motorola and HTC, consumers still pay about the same for these phones as they would with an iPhone.

When the carriers loose control

Things are going to change fast. Soon, the carriers will loose control of the smartphone market, and Android will dominate even more.

As 20 Android smart phone makers compete, there are to be $99 Android phones sold unlocked directly to consumers, such as the Chinese Huawei or ZTE Android phones, there will be alternatives to carriers voice services such as the new VOIP centric version of Google Voice which has become an integral part of Android in Gingerbread.

The next phase of Android means consumers will have choices such as the Archos 28 Internet Tablet at $99, no contracts needed, to do SIP/VOIP/Skype calls on WiFi-only, and depending on the region of the world, there are sub-$20/month even sub-$10/month data SIM cards that will be used to get Data-only experiences of Android. White Spaces could also provide for worldwide free wireless broadband for these devices if setup using the http://fon.com model.

While bloggers analyze smartphone differentiation, fueling a feature war on blogs among constantly improving Android super phone specs, in which new models are represented as destroyers of the ones released the previous week, the fact is brands that sell most don’t do it on features, they do it by negotiating the strongest deals with the carriers. If you look at the US smartphone market, it really doesn’t matter which high end Android phone consumers buy, they all cost basically the same $2400+ after those compulsory 2-years in contracts. The consumer only really gets a choice once devices are sold unlocked through all retailers. Then, prices for these devices will have a meaning and the best value for feature will clearly win. So if you thought it was fun with all these Android phones coming out through carriers this past year, you haven’t seen nothing yet compared to what will happen once phones are sold unlocked directly to consumers.

The next billion sub-$100 Android smartphones

Android smartphones can thus soon be $100 unlocked instead of $2400+ on contract. We are talking about a 24x cheaper Android experiences for the consumer. At that point, the consumer gets to choose who wins the smartphone war. This is happenning. It doesn’t matter what Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia and others do. When there are $100 Android phones in every super market, competitors don’t get to keep a market share if they don’t also provide the devices unlocked for $100 with no contracts needed. You think Apple is looking forward to loosing their 300% profit margins on the iPhone?

What carriers will do to try to keep control

The only ways carriers will try to retain control on their trillion dollar industry will be to block VOIP on cheap wireless data plans, buy out and close down any pre-paid carrier competitors that are offering services that are too cheap on any given market, campaign against unlicensed use of the 700Mhz spectrum for White Spaces, block the licensing of 3G/4G modem technologies in cheap unlocked devices, do anything they can to limit competition in the wireless carrier business. Hopefully all these attempts at keeping control will be defeated by strict regulation and government policies.

The smartphone industry is moving too fast for any Government to regulate it, much too fast even for carriers to adjust and protect themselves against the auto-disruption that is inevitable. Everyone is racing and trying to keep the flow of money going their way for as long as possible.

[I originally wrote this on 16th December 2010 to be published on another blog, but since it wouldn’t get published there as is, I decided to post it here, your turn to say what you think in the comments.]

The potential problem I see with Nexus S and the rumored iPhone5’s NFC implementation would be if they leave out ARM’s TrustZone security system. If those NFC chips are nothing much more than some types of RFID tags for near field authentication, that wouldn’t be enough. We need devices with 100% secure modes that are built in the hardware and that are not improvised in software.

As you can see in the video below, as far as I understand it, TrustZone uses a hardware mechanism in the phone’s hardware to provide for 100% security in authentication, which could be used not only for secure payments, but for authentication with any kinds of online banking and any passwords for any type of website.

The idea is that you need to be able to put your phone in a 100% secure mode from which the authentication happens in some 100% secure way. The secure mode is a parallel OS mode on the phone, which cannot be hacked nor cannot display spoofed authentication screens.

Here’s a usage scenario. You click on any website with a login, be it gmail or any other website, instead of typing in your password on the screen, which could have keyloggers and trojan horses, a login prompt automatically displays on your phone with a light indicator elsewhere than on the screen of your phone lights up letting you know you are in 100% secure mode, the secure mode asks you to authenticate for a given authenticated domain login, you type in your 4-number pin code on your phone in the secure mode, that’s it, your phone authenticates your browser logon, no matter what site it is. Basically, your phone becomes as secure as those calculator types authentication systems that online banks use. Those are basically unhackable, because encryption can be so strong, it would take billions of years for all the computers in the world to find the key to powerful encryption. The only way for someone to access your online accounts would be for them to steal your phone and to know your pin code.

I’d like to know, does Nexus S or any upcoming “NFC” type implementations include something like the ARM TrustZone to provide for true secure online authentication or do we need to wait for yet another generation of devices before we have true meaningful online security?

Related articles

• iPhone 5 and iPad 2 NFC confirmed tip engineers; free NFC payment terminal considered (slashgear.com)
• Apple Aims To Take NFC Mainstream; Perhaps The Greatest Trick They’ve Ever Pulled? (techcrunch.com)
• Apple job posts point to built-in NFC capabilities for iPad / iPhone (engadget.com)
• Nexus S NFC Writing Capabilities Included, But Hidden (pocketnow.com)
• Stanford researchers demo social NFC applications on the Nexus S (engadget.com)

Nokia is the biggest phone maker in the world, they make about half a billion phones each year, it’s insane. The thing is, Nokia makes phones that sell at an average below $20 each, most are being sold in developing countries actually. And even though Nokia makes about 15 times more phones than Apple, they make less than 15 times the profit that Apple does.

Nokia could make the industrys best sub-$100 Android phones, at that price with no subsidy or subscription contracts required. That would completely disrupt the whole iPhone and high-end Android and WP7 market in one swoop. That would focus the market in the area where Nokia is best, at making small margins and large volume.

Nokia could design their own Nokia Android Marketplace if they want, I don’t think they should, instead they have to demand custom standard Google Marketplace, as Google does share in App sales profits with the manufacturer.

Nokia could do all kinds of custom Android UI customizations, as Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, HTC, Samsung, Acer, Lenovo and others have done. I don’t think they should. They should give up on the urge to differentiate in UI designs and instead concentrate on differentiation in hardware design and smooth support for software features through the hardware design, that is the true purpose of a smartphone manufacturer. Give consumers vanilla Android and let consumers install alternative home replacements if they so wish to. Eventually, design a Nokia home replacement if you absolutely want, have it installed by default but absolutely allow for a full change to vanilla Android home UI in an official, not hidden, one click process.

If Nokia has “better ideas” in terms of things such as integrating Qt development framework with Android, suggest more Native Applications Support (such as faster improvements to the Android NDK) or in terms of pushing Android towards more openness in the development process, then “simply” join Google’s Open Handset Alliance and put your full influence on improving the platform for everyone. Be nice.

I am sure Nokia has had a hundred engineers preparing their Android phones for more than a year now, it had probably been some secret projects in their R&D labs that they have been preparing just in case they later find out they need to go the Android route. A big company like Nokia can not afford not to look into Android as the open source releases are released for all to experiment with for free, Nokia could not afford not to prepare some designs just in case, and this is the case for it now.

I think the industry should prepare for the idea that Nokia might make excellent Android phone series to be sold unlocked below $100, below $200, and even some high-end at those below $400 price points. But I think Nokia could aim at the below $200 to feel as good as other companies high-end devices. That is, of course, only, if Nokia is not too much in bed with carriers in a way to prevent themselves from planning to take significant smartphone markeshare overnight by being the mega-disruptor of the Smartphone market, instead of doing like most others do which is to focus on maximizing margins and conspiring with the carriers to trick most consumers into 2-year contracts that are so lame.

What do you think Nokia wants to do and what are they able to do? Post your opinions in the comments.

1. Make White Spaces happen. Things are moving far too slowly. I want to see White Spaces deployed to provide free wireless broadband to the whole world as an alternative to the proprietary 3G/4G/LTE networks. It should be deployed using the FON.com model, Google can invest meager $50 million or whatever is necessary to mass produce the first 1 million routers to activate White Spaces sharing all over the world. The idea should be this, users get these routers that may initially cost $50 to manufacture because the White Spaces chipset is new, but could eventually cost below $20 per router. They install it in their homes, connected to whatever ADSL, Cable, Fiber that people already have in the home. This router creates a White Spaces hotspot that reaches much further than within their home, to cover their whole neighborhood with bandwidth. The router is clever in that it can dynamically throttle bandwidth, if you are at home and you need to use your own bandwidth your bandwidth is 100% prioritized for you to use, thus it does not feel at all like you are sharing your bandwidth, that bandwidth sharing is only of the bandwidth which you don’t need yourself. The whole global network uses OpenID and such with increased level of verification of every users real ID, to authenticate each user on that network, so this is not used as an untraceable anonymous global Internet access, but where any illegal activity could be traced back by local authorities if needed (obviously, proxies and encryption can always be used if someone really wants to be anonymous).

Listen to Larry Page talk about White Spaces, this is more than 2 years ago. What has happened since?

2. Open Google Marketplace to all devices. If there is one point where I think Google might be evil, it’s in their policies to hamper innovation with Android. It’s been about a year and a half that Archos has put Android tablets on the market, still they are not allowed by Google to install the full Google Marketplace on the device. Google needs to stop now. Open several versions of the Google Marketplace if they want, for different types of devices. Or basically just add a settings menu in Google Marketplace that allows apps to be filtered and highlighted differently in terms of how they have been tested (mostly by users themselves) to work better or worse on every different type of device. Allow in those settings for the user or device to present itself automatically for example “without 3G”, “without compass”, “without back camera”, “without android buttons”, “at this specific screen resolution”, then filter apps from there, but never block access to all apps on all devices, if some apps don’t work correctly on certain class of devices, so be it. I believe 99% of the 200’000 apps in the Google Marketplace work 100% just fine on about 100% of the cheapest Android tablets on the market.

I understand that Honeycomb should be opening up Marketplace for more devices. For tablets it’s kind of a certain. But still, will Google allow even the cheapest ARM9 Tablets full access to Honeycomb OS and Marketplace? Honeycomb for Laptops is a possibility. Honeycomb for e-ink e-readers, maybe.

In any case, it’s kind of sad that it took Google more than 2 years to open up Google Marketplace for more devices. This has let Apple all alone in the market of iPad and iPod Touch.

3. Campaign for Net Neutrality on wireless networks for VOIP access. There has been a lot of rage on the blogosphere about Google’s partnership with Verizon in the USA leading up to a Net Neutrality proposal that exempted wireless networks.

It is understandable that bandwidth on wireless networks such as 3G, 4G and LTE have to be managed because it only takes a few users to download some BitTorrents at full speed on one base station for a whole area of up to 1km in diameter where users might experience dropped calls and the like. As far as I understand, even for LTE, bandwidth is limited, although it could be argued that carriers should then just build more base stations closer to users, if they do spend significant money to expand their networks or not, it’s understandable that wireless networks need to be throttled somehow.

But, that should absolutely not allow carriers to block voice-over-IP usage. That is pure evil. Wireless bandwidth shall be used HOWEVER the user wants to use it. If carriers don’t like the idea of becoming dumb pipes of data, that is their problem. They should have considered that possibility when they decided to become carriers.

Carriers have made enough trillions of dollars of profit already, not for them to justify that they should be allowed to continue to gouge the consumer of thousands of dollars per year in completely data bandwidth prices. When you consider the price of 1MB of SMS messages sent costs about $10’000 to the consumer. We are in the year 2011, 1MB of wireless data SHALL NOT cost $10’000 to the consumer.

4. Destroy Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Foursquare and other over-hyped social networks and location based services. This is a call from a user who gets tired of these boring, unoptimized, wastefull, meaningless excuses for social networking and location based services. What a waste of time! Google has to fix this now!

Twitter only benefits famous people. That’s why they keep talking about it. For 99% of users, twitter is absolutely useless, for anything else than to follow whichever famous person you like following, in lists of garbled, meaningless, unoptimized, spammy, messy 140-character messages. Make it stop, please.

Facebook is the newer type of Myspace that is a trend in high schools globally. It’s for not much more than grouping school kids together and have them waste time on farmville, a tool for massive stalking of a bunch of people you never spoke to for 10 years or more. Make it stop, please.

Social networking will be extremely useful eventually. Location based services will revolutionize everything that we do. Just not in those forms. Google needs to make a social network with location services in a way that absolutely makes sense. Make it so people get to do constructive things in the world, people move more, do more things, people get to be more productive, meet more people. End the global era of wasted opportunities, wasted efforts, mutual disdain, rejection and loneliness that can be felt by everyone.

Social networking that makes sense changes organizations, it changes companies, it changes communities, it changes countries. It auto-regulates humans use of global resources and actually makes democracy work.

Yeah those may be high hopes for Google’s social network, but who else than a company of the worlds top 24 thousand Phd software engineers can we rely upon to make this work?

5. Merge Android, Chrome OS and Google TV into one ARM Powered software platform. Google needs to focus on bringing the full Chrome browser on top of Android, provide it with full Google TV features, make it all boot on one ultra optimized ARM Powered software OS image. Read my previous post “Recipe for the ultimate ARM Powered device” for more on how this all-in-one software should work.

6. Bring Internet access to the next billion people faster. It’s all good how Android is taking over the smartphone market. It eventually does bring cheaper Android devices mostly made by Chinese vendors themselves. Still it is not going fast enough. Google should make it a priority that a $50 Unlocked Android Phones shall become available globally. Google should invest billions of dollars in One Laptop Per Child, have it run open source software that is supported by millions of people. Reaching the $75 Tablet should be a priority. Invest billions of dollars in Pixel Qi to mass produce their screens as fast as possible, make sure all devices can last 10 times longer on a battery as soon as possible.

The thing is western countries have a lot of electrical power so they don’t care enough about not having to recharge a 2300mAh battery every night. Consumers in wester countries don’t care enough about the price of the smartphone as most are still buying smartphones subsidized by a carrier who charges upwards $3000 in 2-year contracts that for example most Americans feel are natural thing to sign up for when getting a smartphone.

Getting mobile computing to the next billion people within 2-3 years should be a priority for Google, and if that risks to disrupt the actual business models of the carriers in developed countries by the availability of $50 unlocked Super Phones, $75 Tablet/E-readers and $100 Laptops in every super market, so be it.

7. Monetize independent web video production and make VOD the worldwide standard through YouTube and Google TV. YouTube has already become the worlds largest bandwidth infrastructure, streaming out more than 2 billion video streams per day, hosting and encoding all the worlds video, it’s impressive. Yet, Google now has the opportunity to reach much further and completely monetize YouTube. The YouTube Partnership system is a drop in the bucket compared to what they should do. I’m not allowed to become a YouTube Partner even though I have over 12 million video views (including what I put on other channels and what I had put on Google Video), the reason being Google only allowes residents of G20 countries access to even apply to become a YouTube Partner.

Of those that are conservatively monetizing YouTube video views with overlay advertising, they could do so much more. Why not provide a one-click donation button under every video, on every channel page to allow viewers to sponsor the future productions of their favorite content creators? Why not embed price comparison links with commission payments on one-click sales under every video that talks about a product that can be bought by interested viewers? Why doesn’t Google provide a global subscription plan à la Hulu, but where it gives access to much more than just established Hollywood/TV contents, but where it also monetizes ads-free or higher definition viewing of all independent content? Why doesn’t YouTube offer pay-per-view solutions worldwide, for example, let viewers choose to pay very small amount of money to get a direct link to download any of the videos as an uncompressed video file or on-demand encoded to chosen codec and bitrate/resolutions?

YouTube needs to become much more than the worlds biggest bandwidth infrastructure project. YouTube has to become Google’s biggest source of revenues and profits. It needs to become a tool that changes media and ultimately that improves democracy.

What do you think Google should do now that they have a new CEO? Post in the comments.

The Motorola Atrix 4G gives us a taste of what’s coming. You get one pocketable product, that is, up to 5″ for normal pocket (passport sized), and up to 7″ for jacket pocket (you’ll see, almost every jacket comes with such a pocket), for this summer I think up to 5″ is the more likely size but for next Christmas sales the 7″ size may win, that device runs full speed Android no slow downs, and when docked to Desktop/HDTV Dock it outputs either Chrome OS for productivity or Google TV for entertainment depending on which mode the user wants to use, and also have this solution power the laptop dock.

Ultimate Pricing

– The ARM Powered brains, basically modular Android Tablet should not cost more than $200 at retail this year. Might add $50 for built-in 3G/4G modem. White Space support this year would be good if built in the FON.com model. If someone could miniaturize a reliable swappable and optional 3G/4G/White Space modem module that could be slided into the back of the device, including easily accessible SIM card reader in there, that could be nice. This way the same product is sold worldwide and the unlocked cellular modem would be an optional accessory that could be purchased for $50 separately.

– Desktop/HDTV Dock should be no more than $50. It’s just a bunch of connectors. Full Google TV support could also include HDMI input and IR Blaster in that Dock, as well as the multimedia RF remote. Ports should include at least 3x USB host, 1x HDMI, 1x mini jack input, 1x mini-jack output, 1x optical audio output.

– Laptop Dock should be no more than $100, include super good quality 10.1″ Pixel Qi screen, capacitive touch, so this also turns this into a 10.1″ Tablet.

Fast enough ARM Processors to do it all-in-one.

The ARM Cortex-A9 powering this device should have fast enough memory bandwidth, fast enough I/O, built in a way that it is fully fast enough to run dozens of tabs at the same time in Chrome OS mode, the overlaying features of Google TV mode should have to support full dual-view with overlays when using HDMI pass-through and support all codecs at fully highest bitrates and highest profiles 1080p 60 frames per second.

This may mean that the current Tegra2 in Motorola Atrix 4G may not be fast enough, but that this ultimate product may need to use the upcoming Texas Instruments OMAP4430 (as in Blackberry Playbook), Qualcomm Dual-Core MSM8660 Snapdragon (as in Asus Memo), Samsung Orion (as potentially in Samsung Galaxy S2/Tab2) and let’s see/analyse performance and availability of the upcoming Freescale i.MX6, Marvell Tricore, Nvidia Tegra3. Someone knows how Amlogic’s ARM Cortex-A9, Nufront’s ARM Cortex-A9 and others may perform comparatively? I’m looking forward to post or find web browsing, video playback, battery runtime and pricing benchmarks testings to be done comparing the performance of all these next generation ARM Processor platforms.

Waiting for Google’s software

The main problem for a platform maker at this point, is that Google has not yet released Honeycomb source code, not yet released Chrome OS for ARM, not yet released Google TV for ARM, thus a gadget maker not having real-time access to Google’s software R&D offices, would have to anticipate this evolution and prepare an all-in-one tablet/smartphone solution that would be compatible with integration of these multi-booting software convergence solutions once Google releases them within the next few months. I don’t know for sure how such Atrix 4G like solution would have to work, if each of the Android, Chrome OS and Google TV have to boot all at the same time offering instant swapping between one or the other OS in the user interfaces, or if all 3 of these OS have to be merged somehow first for this to work in an optimal way. Please post in the comments if you know how Motorola does it on Atrix 4G and how this using Android+Chrome+GTV has to work.

My favorite size would be the tablet using the 7″ Pixel Qi screen, allowing for smaller battery thus 200grams super light weight and thin form factor, the laptop dock should somehow allow for the tablet to be docked on the side of the 10.1″, 11.6″ or larger screen, thus actually extending the screen surface, you can thus touch the tablet part and work on the laptop screen. Basically the Laptop Dock could be like shown by Motorola where the pocketable tablet is either behind the laptop screen, but should be with a swivel to be positionned upright next to the laptop screen. Thus this device combines Tablet, E-reader, Mobile Phone, Laptop and Set-top-box functionality all into one.

Non-free, non-open-source alternatives to Android+Chrome+GTV? Fine.

– Someone in the industry thinks they can do it better than Android? Fine. They can try to put RIM’s Playbook OS, HP’s WebOS, Apple’s iOS, Microsoft’s WP7 or Nokia’s Meego on there if they think that is better or they feel they need to differentiate.

– Someone in the industry thinks another browser than Chrome is better? Fine. Like Motorola does Atrix 4G for now with Mozilla Firefox, Opera might have another browser solution, there’s Webkit, IE. All that matters is we get a full speed full resolution ARM Powered web browsing experience with flash and support for all HTML5 web standards including offline web apps, the Native Code and WebGL stuff coming out.

– Someone in the industry think they can do better than Google TV on ARM? Fine. They can load another media player UI on there if they want. Just make sure the user can sit back on a sofa, use a full sized RF keyboard on the USB host, and get near-instant access to all the IPTV, all the VOD, all BitTorrent/RSS downloads, with full codecs support up to 1080p60fps full bitrates, with full NTFS/ETX3 usb hard drive support, full Samba/Upnp/Dlna support, full YouTube 1080p leanback playback and more. Easy plugins for Netflix/Hulu and more is obvious as well. All the while, still sitting in the sofa with that keyboard or fancy lean back mouse pointer, and have a full overlay web experience on top of the video as well, launching overlay apps for chatting, finding other videos, looking up informations, tweeting, video-conferencing and all other features that could be imagined to be done in the living room HDTV.

Who invented this ARM Powered ultimate convergence device?

By the way, this taste of ultimate convergence is not a Motorola invention, although they may be the first to show a sleek ARM Cortex-A9 integration, Archos has been crazy about docks for many years and I’m one of the original Archos Fans (see my other site http://forum.archosfans.com). Archos made the first color screen PMP JBMM20 with Camera/DVR Docks and video outputs 9 years ago, the first embedded Linux Tablet PMA400 (then running Qtopia Linux) 5 years ago, the first Android Tablet Archos 5 Internet Tablet with HDMI 720p Android Dock over a year ago. And Archos has always booted their multimedia OS in parallel with the embedded Linux and more recently Android stuff, both in parallel, thus providing the best of both OS in one same device. But now I believe ARM Cortex-A9 provides enough performance and Google’s software is maturing fast enough so I think Archos and the rest of the industry is able to work towards this dream of an all-in-one device.

Have you got any scoop or ideas for what I should video-blog at CES? What questions would you like me to ask the representatives of which specific companies? If you read on any other blogs about any interesting products showing at this CES, please post your suggestions for what I should film here in the comments of this post. You can also send me an email: [email protected] or you can even sms/call me or leave a voicemail between January 3rd and 11th at my US phone number +1 (702) 238 8630 (only active when I am in the USA).

Here are some of the things I am expecting or hoping to video-blog at CES:

– Lots of Froyo, Gingerbread and Honeycomb stuff. Android in everything!

– Several dual-core tablets are rumored. Nvidia’s Tegra2 is rumored could be one of the stars of the show, rumored to be the “reference design” for Honeycomb. Sounds great, but I am also looking forward to all the other upcoming Dual-Core ARM Processor platforms and I am wondering if products featuring these will be shown at this CES already.

– How soon are the Dual-Core smart phones and tablets being released and at what prices? Will LG, Samsung, Motorola or other present phones at CES to beat Nexus S already?

– ARM Powered Chrome OS Laptops and Google TV Set-top-boxes, I will be looking for the first clues of these products.

– Tablets, more tablets? Any new design features to allow tablets to be used more for productivity? Are some Honeycomb designs like Archos without the hardware Android buttons? Designs with foldable/swivel keyboards?

– Pixel Qi 7″, 10.1″, big OEM announcements? Hopefully these LCD screens will be ready for Kindle-LCD, ipad2, samsung galaxy tab2 and more hopefully mass manufactured and everywhere within the next 3 months.

– Texas Instruments next generation nHD pico projector in all kinds of phones, tablets and other devices at CES? Or not to be shown before February at Mobil World Congress? I’d like to see this type of pico projector be used together with sensors to detect when touching in user interfaces projected for example on a table (see my video of a table-pico-projector prototype UI demonstrated at CeBIT 2007), this could turn any ARM Powered device, even pocketable, into a large screen computing device.

– New ARM Powered platforms for cheaper and better smart phones, tablets and laptops? Rockchip may show ARM Cortex-A8 RK29xx, Broadcom may show BCM2157 for sub-$75 Android phones, is it time for VIA and Telechips to show new faster or/and cheaper solutions for new cooler low-cost Tablets, Laptops and Set-top-boxes?

– Are the new ARM Processors capable of full 1080p at up to 60fps with full high profile and full high bitrates of every codecs?

– Nintendo 3DS is coming in February/March, any other manufacturers to mass manufacture products to use that parallax barrier 3D screen from Sharp that doesn’t require 3D glasses?

– Are ARM Powered NAS boxes and Pogoplugs/Sheevaplugs going to be powerful enough to download and seed BitTorrents at full speed, allow for full speed gigabit LAN file sharing even on the cheaper solutions?

– How much is going to be LTE, how soon and are anyone showing anything to do with White Spaces yet? How soon could that be deployed and at which cost and with what range and authentication features?

– I’d like to see Sanyo release a HD3000 with WiFi/Bluetooth and optics and sensors closer to that of a DSLR. Or it will be interesting to see more DSLR type optics and sensors in more video camcorders and see how affordable those setups can become. It seems Sony, Panasonic and all other major camera makers are going in that direction for the next generation of best HD camcorders.

Please post your expecations/hopes in the comments or send me an email!

Nearly a year ago, Nvidia unveiled its awesome Tegra 2 platform at CES, I was there and I filmed it (2), (3). It took a while for Nvidia and its manufacturing partners to start bringing actual products with Nvidia’s Tegra 2 ARM Cortex-A9 processor onto the market. Possible delays may have been due to manufacturing problems or a wait for stabilized software, new versions of Android and Flash to support this new type of Dual-Core processor.

Other Dual-Core processors are about to reach products in the market as well:
– Texas Instruments OMAP4430 1Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 based products will be introduced in products to the market soon.
– Qualcomm MSM8660 or faster Dual-Core Snapdragon platform may be imminent.
– Marvell Armada 628 Tri-Core platform available in products soon offers upwards 200 million triangles per second.
– Samsung Orion with Mali-400 was unveiled last month (2), will probably show in products within months. Although some rumors also say Samsung may be using the Tegra 2 platform for some products to be shown even earlier.
– ST-Ericsson is working with Nokia to release some Dual-Core Meego devices probably soon.
– Nufront are releasing their Nufront ARM Cortex-A9 for Laptops and Desktops.

Google may focus on Tegra 2 for Honeycomb as some rumors are saying, just as Google prioritized their “Reference designs” like this:
Eclair + Froyo: Snapdragon (Nexus One)
Gingerbread: Hummingbird (Nexus S)
Honeycomb: Tegra 2 (Motorola’s upcoming Tablet)

A “reference design” to Google basically means the actual development hardware Google engineers work on to get their new software released. Though I expect Google and the Open Handset Alliance to bring-up Gingerbread and Honeycomb about as fast on all other Single-Core and Dual-Core platforms as well, just as Froyo got ready on all the other platforms relatively fast.

Dual-Core ARM Processors are probably also what we need for Chrome OS and Ubuntu powered Laptops and Google TV Powered set-top-boxes.

What kind of drivers can possibly be needed to be ported for Windows or the like to work on ARM Powered systems?

Webcams? Those are in the SoC anyways aren’t they? Printers? Cloud printing solutions such as the one from Google or Apple’s AirPrint should solve that shouldn’t it?

Since all the main features of an ARM Powered laptop or desktop design are in the SoC, I have a hard time trying to imagine what kind of delay Microsoft would want to argue needs to be brought by hardware makers for their ARM Powered Windows OS to be ready for the market.

More likely Microsoft is working on an ARM compatible applications platform for Windows.

I think that the more likely situation is that Microsoft does not want to make its long time partner Intel think that Microsoft is doing anything to precipitate things away from x86 onto ARM platforms. I believe that Microsoft’s main goal is to prepare a Windows for ARM just in case the upcoming ARM Powered laptops and desktops become a huge trend and thus Microsoft would rather not leave that market segment exclusively to embedded Linux OSes like Chrome OS for ARM, Ubuntu for ARM and other optimized Linux OS.

Also likely Microsoft wants to have a strong ARM Powered Tablet oriented Windows OS. Thus the UI for Tablet use could be similar to Windows Phone 7.

Logically, to be competitive, the licencing price of Windows 8 for ARM should be at most half the price of same licencing on Intel.

Source: bloomberg.com
Via: ubuntuforecast.com

Related articles

• Microsoft ARMs Windows for iPad assault (allegedly) (go.theregister.com)
• Report: Microsoft bringing Windows to ARM chips (news.cnet.com)
• Rumor: Microsoft to talk about an ARM version of Windows at CES [Hard to believe] (intomobile.com)
• Microsoft Windows for ARM devices set for CES 2011 (techradar.com)
• Microsoft plans Windows tied to ARM chips: reports (marketwatch.com)
• Microsoft to Announce an ARM Processor Compatible Version of Windows OS (slashgear.com)
• Microsoft to announce ARM-based Windows at CES? (engadget.com)
• Microsoft Plans to talk Windows on ARM at CES, but Products a Ways Off [Mobilized] (mobilized.allthingsd.com)

So Google faces challenges in getting American TV networks to agree to allow them to stream TV shows from the web on the Google TV platform. I have estimated that if Google and Adobe wanted, if the negociations with US TV networks wouldn’t lead to a solution, that they could unleash a software update to present both the browser and the flash plugin as “User Agent: Generic” making detection by US TV networks impossible and thus forcing them to either remove online TV streaming completely or just regard Google TV as same user terminal as any “normal” laptop or desktop computer.

So let’s assume Google TV will have only a limited showing at CES, perhaps Google is trying to coordinate a giant unveiling of second phase of Google TV at CeBIT in March, by that time, more of the major manufacturers could present boxes, Google would present not only Google Marketplace and smoother software integration, they could launch world wide Google TV support (not limited to US anymore), they could also, as suggested by Tudor Brown ARM President last month, present cheaper ARM Powered Google TV devices such as the concept of a $99 ARM Powered Google TV box.

The $99 ARM Powered Google TV set-top-box is an important target, as that makes it affordable enough that everyone will buy one, providing full performance for 1080p YouTube streaming and the HDMI pass-through and IR blaster features, it would provide for the perfect platform to revolutionize TV.

What the One Laptop Per Child successfully initiated after 2006, forcing Intel to introduce the Netbook market segment, thus lowering the average price per laptop consumers would purchase by $100-200 overnight, Google is attempting to do even more aggressively with Chrome OS.

These past 2 years, I reviewed several ARM Powered $99 Laptops already, from such Chinese as Hivision, MenQ, Firstview or Indian AllGo Systems, powered by VIA’s Wondermedia or other of the affordable ARM9 or ARM11 platforms that are available to these manufacturers for affordable implementation at that time. Sure enough, ARM Cortex A8 and A9, more RAM, faster SoCs are more appropriate for full laptop performance. Every 18 months chips are twice as fast or twice cheaper. How much more do you think that a new ARM Cortex-A9 SoC platform with a larger higher resolution LCD screen costs today compared to an ARM9 from 2 years ago? $30 more? The same? These cheap ARM Powered laptops are interesting because they are early products that have been giving us a taste of the ARM Powered laptops that are coming.

Sure the Cr-48 that Google are beta testing is Intel powered. That is just a question of beta testing of software. ARM Powered Chrome OS probably needs ARM Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 processors to be optimized for large screen laptop computing. The Chrome Browser requires a lot of RAM to be fast. All the I/O and memories on the SoC need to be accelerated to the point the Chrome web browser in a laptop form factor feels 100% as fast on ARM as on Intel.

It may be that the current generation ARM Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 are more suitable for Tablets and Smart Phones than for Laptops and Desktops. More likely, it is that Google has enough to beta test on Intel that they cannot advertise simultaneous beta testing on ARM at this moment as well.

In any ways, it might still be months before mass market Chrome OS laptops are sold to consumers. So clearly the Cr-48 being Intel doesn’t have to be an indication of ARM being “not ready” but instead might be simply a question of Google focusing their beta testing program on Intel for now. ARM and Intel based Chrome OS may still actually be released simultaneously to consumers next year.

Also consider the fact Intel CEO Paul Otelinni is also on the board of directors of Google, mysteriously. And that pressure from Intel on Google might convince Google to do such things as Chrome OS and Google TV with Intel first, all the while Google knows that ARM is the best platform eventually for both projects. Although Google TV is released to consumers, it’s still limited in size to one similar to beta testing, it’s like when Google releases a Nexus phone, they don’t do it to sell many Nexus phones, they do it to push their software platform forward, which always turns out that the industry combined sells more Google based devices than all other.

This is what I think Google plans to achieve with lower hardware pricing:
– $99 Google TV -> turns YouTube into larger share of people’s daily 5-hour TV watching, 10x increase in YouTube bandwidth when succeeded, changes outcome of elections brings more visionary high-tech favorable politicians to power
– $99 Chrome OS laptops -> realizes cloud computing dream, more ads served per user, enterprise all adopt Chrome OS for speed, security and price, brings in ecosystem for pay-per-web-app.
– $99 Pixel Qi Tablet/E-readers -> platform for Google e-books, full web experience on-the-go, more reading, outdoor use, more personal connection to the web
– $99 Gingerbread Smart Phones -> Google Voice true VOIP replaces telcos, eventually White Spaces is brought in to provide free wireless broadband. Google pushes Local services, location-based advertising brings in next hundred billion in revenues.

It only makes sense Google’s platforms will have the absolute largest market share in all these market segments. In all these segments, Google never plans to make profit on hardware, the hardware business is outsourced to manufacturers and brands, Google just plans for their platforms to dominate.

Price of Chrome OS laptops is the true revolution here.

As Google isn’t yet announcing the price, it may be hard for analysts to grasp the potential here.

How can a Google Chrome OS notebook be sold at $99?

1. ARM Powered laptops cost half the price to manufacture compared to Intel, even the Intel one can be sold $199, deduct at least Windows licence and Hard drive costs compared to a “regular” netbook, that’s 5-10 times cheaper than the Macbook air.

2. Removing hard drive, simplifying motherboard lowers cost.

3. Google makes money later on ads. Seriously, do a calculation how much advertising money Google makes on each of their users, divide their yearly reported revenues by the number of users, Chrome OS users will see even more Google ads than other.

4. Google and Telecoms make money later on selling on-demand 3G/4G wireless data. Even as this should be sold without compulsory subscription plan, the pricing and ease of use should be so tempting, a large share of users will potentially spend hundreds of dollars for on-demand wireless data service. This should be built-in, perhaps not even a SIM card slot, allows Google to also negociate 3G/4G bandwidth deals in all countries worldwide. If prices change in other countries, simply click boom to accept and you’ve got on-demand wireless bandwidth.

5. Google and Developers will make money later on selling apps. Eventually monetization of web apps will be more than just ads. Even enterprise stuff like Google Apps, Citrix stuff and other Virtualization of Windows/Mac x86 apps, those kinds of services could generate up to thousands of dollars per user in the enterprise.

Critics of Google’s Chrome OS based cloud computing need to understand a few things about where it is and where it’s going:

– HTML5 apps can work offline and don’t have to be slower because of connectivity. Including Google Docs and potential cloud assisted video and photo editing, all can work offline.

– Native code and powerful 3D will be part of it. This means basicaly all apps you can imagine that are on Windows and Mac can also work here. I expect new cloud based versions of http://youtube.com/editor means even video editing professionals will rather want to use this type of cloud based apps for instant encoding and rendering using the power of thousands of grid processing servers on the cloud.

– WebGL and other advances in web browser technology increases potential complexity of web apps.

– A 32GB SD card costs less than $49, a 500GB 2.5″ external USB hard drive costs $49, both work in Chrome OS, I even envision a Chrome OS laptop design with available slot to insert a 2.5″ hard drive and have it only powered when accessed.

– You can backup and sync your cloud easily on a $49 ARM Powered NAS such as a pogoplug in your home, connect any $99 3.5″ 2TB hard drive to that.

– Citrix has demonstrated, any x86 app you want can be virtualized in Chrome OS to actually run faster thanks to cloud grid app hosting than any local PC.

The probable technical reason TV networks are able to currently block Google TV from accessing their online web tv offerings is probably flash.

The Chrome browser in Google TV can be set to User Agent: Generic (by default though it is set as User Agent: Google TV), thus making it impossible for websites to detect that the user visiting the website is using a set-top-box or a computer/laptop/tablet or other device.

The probable only way for them to detect the set-top-box, can only be the flash plugin. As Adobe probably doesn’t want to irritate the TV networks, due to them all using Flash, they probably also don’t want to allow Google to switch over the flash player in Google TV to User Agent: Generic.

Google probably also prefers to try as hard as possible to make some deals with the content providers instead of forcing Adobe into setting up Flash to be undetectable. As Google wants all these content partners also to allow their content be distributed on YouTube.

In any ways, if Google and the TV Networks don’t reach an agreement soon, I am sure Google will eventually ask Adobe to provide Flash in a totally undetectable fashion. And if that happens, the TV networks will only be able to decide if they want to have any “legal” streaming of their shows online or none at all. And if they decide to remove online flash streaming, the most popular application on Google TV boxes will most likely then be BitTorrent.

Related articles

• Vizio and Toshiba reportedly to announce Google TV sets at CES [TNW Google] (thenextweb.com)
• Viacom Blocks Google TV Users (adweek.com)
• Viacom is the latest network to block Google TV (geek.com)
• How To Watch The Daily Show on Google TV (gigaom.com)
• How To Watch The Daily Show on Google TV (nytimes.com)
• Fox to Block Google TV: Now Every Major US TV Network Blocking Google TV (crenk.com)
• Viacom blocks Google TV, the madness continues (venturebeat.com)
• Comedy Central, MTV now blocking Google TV (news.cnet.com)

We all know Taiwan-based manufacturers are capable of commercializing products pretty well, and they have dominated the global production of PCs. However, they have failed to keep the related profits in their pockets.

Tablet PC’s open platform will allow profits to be distributed more evenly among supply chain participants, unlike the current model in which CPU and OS giants take most of the earnings. An Android tablet, for example, is a final product with all essential components including software development and integration.

Acer, Asus, MSI are Taiwanese PC brands that have been expanding their market share in the last 10 years, they did this to keep more of the profits to themselves instead of only manufacturing all the laptops and PCs for mostly US and some European brands. The thing is, even while removing the branding intermediary, by having to compete on costs, selling Intel and Microsoft powered products is not leaving the Acer, Asus, MSI a lot of profits to keep for themselves. Still today, in the Intel x86 industry, most of the profits go to Intel and Microsoft.

It is still too early to determine how the tablet PC market will perform in 2011, with no historical context or sense to examine. Personally, I believe the market for tablet computers will likely generate between US$30 billion and US$60 billion next year. There will be more than a dozen players dividing up the pie, not just one or two. [Intel and Microsoft]

Ergo, the whole interest around the ARM Powered devices such as the tablets, smart phones, laptops, e-readers, it’s not only a case in ARM technology providing better value, lower cost, lower power consumption, sufficient performance (for web browsing) in lesser amounts of components and more compact form factors. It is not just about the ARM ecosystems unique abilities to foster increased innovation by industry wide collaboration and differentiation. The main benefit of ARM’s business model, is that by collaborating on software such as the free Android/Chrome OS/Google TV software OS and on other common solutions, the supply chain participants can keep more of the profits to themselves all the while still lower the cost to the consumer.

Despite more contenders, ARM-designed processors are still expected to remain the dominant technology for tablet PCs for three contributing factors: ARM’s well-established network of silicon partners allowing downstream players to diversify their solution providers, our energy-saving features, and software support around the chip architecture. We work with an increasing number of software providers targeting applications for mobile devices.

You can read the complete Q&A at: digitimes.com

Related articles

• Acer to announce Android 2.2 tablet today in NYC? (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
• Acer likely to announce a 7 inch Android 2.2 tablet and 10 inch Windows 7 tablet today in New York (intomobile.com)
• Acer Leans On Old, New Partners in Tablet Push (blogs.wsj.com)

Andy Rubin told me at Mobile World Congress:

We are not the ones deciding the price.

Android has been the most disruptive thing to happen in the smart phone industry. The question is, what does Google want to do with the next level of this software platform? Is Google going to push for even faster auto-disruption of the telecom industry by pushing the industry towards significantly lower cost unlocked devices?

The rumors are that Samsung is working with Google (because they can) preparing a 4″ Super AMOLED based, possibly Hummingbird 1-1.2Ghz, possibly Orion for Smart Phones (ARM Cortex-A9), possibly 4G-enabled, possibly quint-band to support all HSUPA+/CDMA and LTE/WiMax and maybe even White Spaces technologies all in one.

What I want to know: How cheap?

Samsung Galaxy S is priced above 440€ in Europe when bought unlocked (= $613 with EU 20% VAT, $490 without). Samsung has major agreements with all the major US carriers about selling their Galaxy S for upwards $3000 with the 2-year contracts that most US consumers sign and pay. How would Samsung agree to manufacture and sell a Google branded Gingerbread device significantly lower priced than their current Galaxy devices? The Samsung Galaxy Tab is upwards 799€ unlocked in Europe, upwards $1500 or more with the 2-year contracts in the US. It just doesn’t sound probable enough to me that Samsung would be the manufacturer that would want to start selling a $199 unlocked mass market Android Super Phone to disrupt its own growing Android Smart Phone and Tablet businesses.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says they want to provide Smart Phones to the next 5 billion people, it has to reach developing countries. Are those developing countries going to have exclusive cheaper phones sold to them only while richer countries in Europe and the US are locked with choices mostly above the $400 if trying to buy things unlocked? Globalization should mean disruptive pricing achieved in one part of the world should also arrive to all other parts of the world simultaneously.

isuppli and other such hardware tear down and component analysis sites estimate the cost of materials and manufacture of even the top of the line current Android Super Phones to be trending downwards just $150 per super phone. We see more and more manufacturers competing in this market. How soon till we have choices for unlocked $199 Android Super Phones?

The coolest rumor on Gingerbread is that Google Voice will be highly integrated offering true VOIP functionality into the core of the Android OS. This would provide the software foundation for a data-centric Android phone, bought for below $200 unlocked, with data-only wireless pre-paid plans, no 2-year contracts required.

we’ve learned that Google’s adding SIP support in their Google Voice application to allow you to receive calls to your Google Voice number over WiFi and cellular data.

We want Google Voice worldwide not just on US cellular networks. A real VOIP and worldwide version of Google Voice in Gingerbread will be huge.

1. BitTorrent download/streaming: Just type in the name of a movie, TV show, game or song and it will download to an external USB hard drive, or perhaps even better, it will download to your cloud based storage, so-called online seedbox services which can download any BitTorrent on 1gbit/1gbit symmetrical connections and then stream you the downloaded content after minutes. Imagine such international seedboxing network, that can directly interlink and shares Petabytes among the most popular contents with each other, so in many cases, when you request a popular content, it will already be pre-cached on that seedbox or can quickly be cached within that network and instantly streamed to your Google TV box.

Not very legal? Who knows, laws can be changed by politicians, I expect Google TV could accelerate the implementation of Global Licence regulation, where everyone pays a sort of tax on their Internet Service Provider, which thus is redistributed to content creators directly, excluding old-media intermediaries.

It will be interesting to see if the local BitTorrent client app or if the global remote untracable encrypted seedboxing approach will dominate. I expect that this p2p app on Google TV cannot be blocked or remotely removed by Google, Sony, Logitech or by anyone else, that is, if the platform truly is open. I also expect live p2p streaming to work. So you could also watch any TV channel like this, with a quality bitrate that is the same as your own upload bandwidth, as everyone watching is expected to upload to other viewers in real-time so unlimited amounts of users can tune in for free to any live TV channel they want.

Subscribing to BitTorrent RSS feeds will be a great way to auto-download shows and have them ready stored on the USB hard drive to playback on your TV or to sync to your portable Android device.

2. Cloud-based DVR service: while I wonder if Google TV can record TV contents from its HDMI input, with or without needing to use the recently cracked HDCP copy-protection code, while it may be cool to store HD digital copies of TV contents on a simple external USB hard drive, the most interesting DVR feature of Google TV may be remote cloud based DVR services to be provided by Google and perhaps other cloud service providers. Basically, you hit the record button, and that content is recorded on the cloud. The way it truly would happen, is that Google is recording every TV channel all the time no matter what, and depending on laws and regulations, users should be able to get access to all of that content on-demand after broadcast.

This is one big Global cloud based DVR of all channels. Maybe it would require Google to also provide real-time compression of all those recordings so that people with slower bandwidths can still stream all those cloud DVR recordings. If laws and regulation for DVR use does not allow everyone from rewinding and watching everything on-demand, then at least as long as the user has scheduled any specific recordings, has clicked “record” before the show started, then all that content could be provided back. The question is, may the user click a “Record all channels all the time” button?

Google has been doing global cloud based DVR recordings for a while now, as they need it anyways for their content ID matching technology. So now, the release of Google TV may bring those cloud DVR recordings closer to YouTube as well, as TV contents will be posted to Youtube automatically, depending on rights with content makers. If a TV channel opts-in, 100% of their broadcasts can thus be automatically published to Youtube.

3. Game console: 3D graphics accelerating performance should be powerful enough to provide Wii-like gaming graphics. Logically, there will be emulators available for all Nintendo consoles up till N64 and more if Nintendo agrees to licence its games legally. Also, Google has been saying that video gaming is a big part of their plans for Android 3.0 Gingerbread, which probably also includes support thus for the Google TV platform. Which game controllers will be best to use? The Wii remote or any other decent Bluetooth remote control will probably work great for multi-player gaming.

4. YouTube Leanback: the key for Google TV is to provide an excellent Leanback experience for all web videos. It is absolutely important that when people search for anything, that the best most user targetted video for that topic is displayed in full screen instantly in one click. The recommendations algorithm that Google and other app providers need to implement as overlay layer on top of this Leanback experience is crucial as well. There needs to be one big green “Like” button and one big red “Skip” button of which all user ratings need to be carefully aggregated to thus provide personalized Leanback web video experience. This experience could be so good that it could take over most of people’s daily 5-hours of TV watching.

Imagine this scenario: Sit on your sofa, hit the green button. Leanback starts. It knows your topics of interest and launches a video in a mix of those genres that you like and from a source it thinks you will enjoy at that moment in time based on knowing your tastes. If you are in any specific mood for any specific contents, just type those in to tweak the recommendations algorithm at that moment to bring you contents in those more specified areas. At any moment you can add tags, add or select genres and topics to thus tweak what it brings to you at that moment.

The goal with Leanback is that the algorithm can bring you full screen video contents that should make you think following statement at every single time: Oh wow, this video is just awesome! more!

Eventually, Leanback should provide in-video automatic editing. If you are in a hurry, you could watch just the best parts of any video, skip past the boring parts. The way it learns what parts of videos are best, is that this green “Like” button and red “Skip” or fast-forward buttons can be pushed at any specific times by all users. When something really cool is going on in a video, you can hit the green “Like” button again, it thus creates hot-zones on all videos to thus be able to extract the best scenes and even add them to playlists together with the best scenes from other videos.

5. Content publishing: Google TV could turn out to be one of the futures central tool for creating your own TV contents and publishing it from your living room. The HD webcam such as Logitech’s is not only going to be used for HD video-conferencing, which already is ground-breaking and revolutionary (second best “just like being there” experience with family, friends, colleagues and customers). The HD Webcam could be used to record multi-user live podcast shows, with someone somewhere doing the real-time multi-camera editing, content that can be streamed live by unlimited other users and can be stored thus as TV shows. But it should also support uploading and publishing of any HD video contents from a camcorder, just plug in your HD camcorder to the USB connector of Google TV, and that video content can be published to YouTube HD this way.

6. Quad-HD content streaming: the reason Quad-HD does not yet exist in all our most modern HDTVs is not so much a technological issue, but more of an infrastructure issue. Regular terrestrial, satellite, cable TV networks supposedly do not provide enough bandwidth to provide Quad-HD TV contents on them. And in turn as well, no HDTV makers yet want to produce the Quad-HD screens saying the reason for not making them is because there is no content to watch. Google TV changes this. In theory, Quad-HD is just a newer processor inside of the HDTVs. The upgrade of processor inside of the HDTV to support 3840×2160 may just cost $50 more than the current 1920×1080 HDTV, at least if it is mass manufactured with quickly expanding demand. YouTube already supports Quad-HD content streaming. I estimate that the bandwidth required for on-demand Quad-HD video streaming could be around 24mbit/s. Many Google TV users may already have enough bandwidth to support this. And if full bandwidth is not always available, then any resolution above 1080p and below 2160p could be streamed at adaptable bitrates. It may be true that above 46″ Quad-HD screen may be required for good use of that extra resolution. But I have seen Quad-HD at trade shows for years now, and every time I see demonstrations, it simply is amazing and awesome, even just watching 8megapixel digicam pictures on a Quad-HD screen up close is an awesome experience, I find it 100x more interesting than the marketing fad that is 3DTV.

Related articles

• Playing With YouTube Leanback On Google TV: Nice! (searchengineland.com)
• Google Leanback on TV is really neat (zdnet.com)
• How It Feels to Use Sony’s First Google TV [Video] (gizmodo.com)
• YouTube Rolls Out Leanback on Eve of Google TV’s Launch (mashable.com)

Until then, ARM Powered “Smart TV” solutions are all over the market in set-top-boxes, media streamers, built-into modern Blu-ray players and HDTVs as you can see in solutions I recently filmed from Philips, LG, Samsung and Panasonic.

Marvell can justify the investment as an R&D investment in which everything OLPC develops, as all OLPC hardware designs are open source, can freely be used by Marvell’s manufacturing OEM partners to also release commercial tablet products based on these technologies.

OLPC will use these funds to develop the Tablet that can be used for productivity, for constructionist learning as Nicholas Negroponte said at the Mobilize 2010 conference last week:

How do you make tablets a constructionist medium? A medium where you make things, you don’t just consume them. Cause if it’s about kids and learning, it’s not like you feed a goose grain to make the foie gras. You have to make it for kids to use it, to make, to communicate. Whether it’s music, whether it’s text or whether it’s to write computer programs. And it has to be so low power, when it runs out of power you just shake it a little bit and it continues.

These are the challenges that OLPC will work on to implement in XO-3 before the target 2012 $75 release:

Why should children use tablets instead of laptops?

The future of OLPC: it’s a notepad.

The notepad is the oldest tool used by children in the class room. Imagine adding full online and offline interactivity to the notepad. Imagine a magic notepad that can display every page from every book, every image and every video ever filmed. To display low bitrate tutorial videos that work even in black and white mode like the ones of the Khan Academy, even have them be interactive and provided as learning games. The student can annotate all books, take notes and share them. The tablet is not only lighter and could be designed for cheaper, it also is the more usable form factor as an e-reader for reading all books ever written in the world. As Nicholas Negroponte says:

There is no way to justify a paper book. If you’d want to send 10 thousand physical books, you’d have to take every 747 out of service around the planet just to move them from wherever they are being manufactured. Physical books are a luxury.

I wonder if 7″ or 10.1″ Pixel Qi will be used, or both. The 7″ size may be optimal for it to be as light, cheap and durable as possible, it might be better for children to read books on a 7″ form factor than a 10.1″ one. For productivity, I think it should support both touch screen and some cheap $2 USB keyboards/mouse and use its built-in kick-stand. Children can easily carry a $2 keyboard/mouse when they need to be most productive. Maybe a thin keyboard to double as screen protector and which can be clipped onto the back of the device when in tablet/e-reader mode could be a nice design feature, although the screen needs to be unbreakable enough for children not to need worry about carrying the tablet without a screen protector.

For software, I think that OLPC should work with Google and the emerging tablet industry to customize Android for education. Maybe add Sugar apps support on top of Android OS as a secondary app platform “module layer” on top of Android. Basically, Sugar could be a custom UI layer on top of Android for the XO-3 tablet.

$299 ARM Cortex A8 45nm 1ghz omap3630 10.1″ WSVGA capacitive Android 2.2 tablet 8GB. $349 for 16GB version
$275 ARM Cortex A8 45nm 1ghz omap3630 7″ WVGA capacitive Android 2.2 tablet 16GB, $349 for 250GB version
$199 ARM Cortex A8 45nm 1ghz omap3630 4.3″ FWVGA resistive Android 2.2 tablet 16GB
$149 ARM Cortex A8 45nm 800mhz omap3630 3.2″ WQVGA resistive Android 2.2 tablet 8GB
$99 ARM Cortex A8 45nm 800mhz omap3630 2.8″ QVGA resistive Android 2.2 tablet 4GB, $119 for 8GB version

I think those new Archos Android tablets are very good value for money. Google Marketplace can very likely be installed on all of them as the previous Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android which was released October 2009, got the Google Marketplace on it through a solution released since November 2009 in the http://forum.archosfans.com

No matter what Google or anyone else says, Android 2.2 is great for tablets, most of the apps from the Google Marketplace, probably 99% of them will work just fine on the Archos series of Tablets, apps requiring a back-facing camera, GPS/Compass, 3G or hardware buttons are a minority. Archos can playback most video formats, including h264 MKV high profile at up to 720p with high bitrates (to be tested and confirmed if that reprensents more than 90% of all 720p movies currently traded on p2p networks).

Archos also released this animation illustrating their advantages in hardware design over the iPad:

This keynote presentation is available as a slideshow with prompter subtitles at: http://www.archos.com/_pres_hc.html Here are a couple of some of the best slides:

The number of ARM chips produced a year, which go into many different products, dwarfs the hundreds of millions of chips sold by Intel, the world’s largest chip maker in terms of revenue. Inevitably, analysts often portray the companies as mortal enemies, dueling for dominance in the chip market. ARM executives play down such a dramatic story line in their typical, low-key fashion.

“People want there to be this David and Goliath struggle between us and Intel,” Mr. East said. “It just isn’t that way.”

I wonder also if Intel strategists are resting on their laurels and not seeing ARM as a threat to its Netbook, Laptop, Desktop, Set-top-box (Google TV) and Server markets?

“We don’t look like Intel,” he said. “We’re never going to be a $100 billion outfit.”

Yet ARM just unveiled new chip designs that could carry its products into servers and networking equipment — Intel’s turf.

Is ARM presaging an era with no more $100 billion giant dominant corporations in the consumer electronics industry? ARM solutions enabled Apple to more than triple its gigantic valuation on the Nasdaq over the past 5 years, but are these mega Silicon Valley companies going to continue to be so large?

Investors appear enthralled by ARM’s business. Over the last year, the company’s shares have nearly tripled, to a close on Friday of $18.34, from a low of $6.52. Rumors have swirled that Apple may acquire ARM, though such a move seems unlikely given ARM’s broad partnership model.

“I laughed about it with the folks at Apple,” Mr. East said. “It is completely nonsensical.”

It is simply not going to happen. The EU and ARM’s obligations to its partners would not allow it to happen.

“Apple and the Newton made the company exist,” said Mike Muller, one of the founders of ARM and its chief technology officer. “The Newton never went anywhere, but it got ARM started and gave us some credibility.”

Dealing with hand-held devices and cellphones forced ARM to operate under severe power restrictions. It chased milliwatts, while Intel chased horsepower.

Once ARM has reached the desired level of performance at a desired level of power consumption, then it means ARM can bring competition to a market, which creates an environment for a faster rate of innovation among companies. Once full web browsing is demonstrated to work on ARM, once full WebTV and VOD interfaces fully work on ARM, it will mean that the ecosystem of ARM providers can replace the need for Intel in these areas.

“We’ve always known Cambridge is not the center of the universe,” Mr. Muller said. “If you’re in Silicon Valley, you might make that mistake.”

The company offers choice to customers through various types of licenses. A customer can take ARM’s basic design at face value or choose a license that allows it to create custom products.

“We’re encouraging specialists to do what they’re good at,” Mr. Muller said.

The companies making ARM Cortex A8, A9 and A15 designs, such as Texas Instruments, Freescale, Samsung, ST Ericsson, Nvidia, Rockchip, VIA and Telechips those are using the one type of ARM licence. While Marvell, Qualcomm and Microsoft are using another type of ARM licence which allows them to differently customize their processor technology offerings.

Intel and Microsoft secure the vast majority of profits available in computers and servers, leaving the likes of Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer to fight over a few dollars per machine.

Apple has shown that the largest profit margins are available in adopting the ARM ecosystem and philosophy of product design and marketing. It is likely that we will soon see all the major PC, Laptop and Server manufacturers shift to using ARM solutions, which will both allow to lower cost to customers and increase the profit margins at the same time!

Source: nytimes.com
Found via: techmeme.com

1. Archos 101 Internet Tablet, first 10.1″ capacitive Android 2.2 Froyo ARM cortex A8 45nm Tablet to be sold below $299. It’s really thin, at 480gr it’s 30% lighter than the iPad yet offers 12% wider screen surface (better for movies and TV shows). HDMI output and USB host and full video and audio codecs support. All that for $200 cheaper than the iPad.

2. Archos 43 Internet Tablet, nicely priced below $199 alternative to HTC EVO and Droid X, with no expensive contracts needed for this 4.3″ Froyo Android 2.2 experience

3. Archos 28 Internet Tablet, first ARM Cortex A8 45nm Android 2.2 Froyo device to be priced below $99 with no contracts needed, that’s 2.3 times cheaper than the iPod Touch

(yup, I am an Archos fanboy.. but so is ARM and Texas Instruments too..)

4. Toshiba AC-100 ARM Tegra2 Powered Android Laptop, this is the first mass produced ARM Cortex A9 powered laptop to be brought to the market, it is a significant product. Toshiba has done a super good keyboard and mouse-pad design for it and it is really thin and light. Now of course, all that is needed, is better software for it. I don’t think it is enough for them to just take open source Android and port it to it and add few custom widgets on top. They need to port the full Chrome web browser to Android. They need to officially support a triple-boot configuration on this ARM Powered laptop with Chrome OS for ARM and with Ubuntu for ARM also being optional OS to boot into. Also, I do think the $299 price point is a bit high. The idea with the ARM powered laptops is that they are going to be much cheaper and better value than the Intel powered ones. I think the relatively high price is only due to Toshiba being the first to market and them wanting to enjoy larger profit margins while they wait for all the other manufacturers to join the party. Also, once they get the Pixel Qi screen in there, the battery runtime will be close to 40 hours on such a device.

5. PocketBook 903 Pro, I really like the idea of 3G/WiFi/Bluetooth and Wacom-style digitizer in an A4 sized e-ink e-reader. I would like Chrome-to-phone like features, to throw any article and ebooks from my web browser directly onto such more readable display, and then I would also like to see connected annotation collaboration and communication features added, all those things are just software things.

6. Sony Reader PRS-650 Touch Edition, I am impressed with Sony’s new touch screen technology for their new e-readers. Although I would say it is a bit sad that Sony never updates their e-reader firmwares, that this 229€ version does not include WiFi nor Bluetooth nor 3G for connectivity. Still, the finger and stylus laser based touch screen technology is great for UI navigation and for annotations. I also like the fact that Sony is marketing it to be supporting free library borrowing of all e-books, I much prefer borrowing all ebooks for free and legally than paying $10 per ebook or pirating them. The electronic ebook library concept will be fascinating way for people to access all ebooks for free.

7. Samsung Galaxy Tab, for sure one of the big highlights of this IFA is to see such a huge company as Samsung going all in with the 7″ capacitive Android tablet market, I can’t wait to see how successful their marketing will be with this against the iPad. The whole area of discussions around Google supporting of Android tablets, it is simply fascinating. Of course, obviously, the Samsung Galaxy Tab is highly overpriced at 799€ without contract and 1359€ with 2-year contract. But it sure is a nice product and the tablet market really makes me happy.

8. UMEC Freescale i.MX51 based 7″ Android tablets, I like the features and possibilities of this hardware. See my other Freescale tablet videos such as the one running Chromium OS on it, it should be totally possible.

9. iMuz 5″ Android tablet, this South Korean company seemed to me to have pretty good Telechips ARM11 based Android tablet devices on display.

10. Sharp’s Parallax Barrier 3D screen, it’s pretty amazing to experience it at the trade show on display. This is the 3.8″ WVGA 3D screen that the Nintendo 3DS is going to use. It really works, although probably best with 3D games once the Nintendo comes out than with low quality built-in 3D cameras. You have to hold the screen in the middle and around exactly 30 centimeters from your eyes, my guess though with the Nintendo, this might become easy to get used to hold it like that and I also like Nintendo will have a slider on the side that will enable to lower or to completely remove the 3D effect of the screen.

My follow-ups:

11. Interpad’s Tegra2 Powered Android 2.2 Tablet, a really nice Android tablet too, to be priced 399€. I think it is based on the Malata Android tablet design that I filmed at Computex.

12. Toshiba Folio 100 Tegra2 Android tablet, yet another Tegra2 10.1″ capacitive Android 2.2 Tablet to come out, also priced above 399€.

13. Philips GoGear Connect, one of the first non-3G Android devices based on the Freescale i.MX51 ARM Cortex A8 processor with official Google Marketplace support but price is likely going to be above 249€.

14. Samsung YP-G50, another lower cost Android media player device, also to compete with the iPod Touch, with official Google Marketplace support and a slower Samsung ARM11 processor, the price is also likely to be at least the same as the iPod Touch.

15. Mobile Tech 5″ Android Tablet, this company is also making some interesting Telechips ARM11 based Android tablets.

If you have any other preferences for Best of IFA, you are welcome to post those in the comments.