Computex 2010, the massive Taipei electronics expo is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, with a slew of new gizmos and gadgets, smartphones and tablets on display.
TAITRA, Taiwan’s External Trade Development Council, says it believes the show will bring some $20 billion of business into the country, with over 1715 vendors spread across 5,000 booths in two huge Taipei venues.
Although the show is officially set to kick off on Tuesday June 1st, a fair few firms – including NVIDIA, ASUS, MSI and ARM – decided to get a head start on the action, holding press conferences the day before.
RCR has compiled a few bite sized morsels from the first half of the pre-show day:
NVIDIA’s Tegra tablet: all talk?
NVIDIA’s CEO Jen Hsun Huang was all a-flutter over tablets, telling the audience at his afternoon press conference that the devices were practically the be-all and end-all in terms of mobile computing.
The tablet has the “ability to allow us to enjoy nearly all the content that we would like to enjoy on a computer today,” said Huang, before anticlimactically proceeding to tell everyone to have patience, and that Tegra 2 tablets should be out by fall. Although they really should have been out already if you ask us. Still, better late than never, and several firms are set to announce Tegra 2 based products at this year’s show.
Eagle eyed reporters scour ARM’s roadmap
ARM’s president Tudor Brown let fly a tasty tidbit about the firm’s upcoming product roadmap, with a slide showing a product dubbed “Eagle Eye” appearing just above the current Cortex-A9 platform. Reports from sources indicate that Eagle Eye will indeed be the next-generation core for high-end platforms, with unsurprisingly higher performance.
If you’re less into bird watching and more into TV watching, ARM may be able to help with that too, as Brown noted in a Q&A session that his firm would be helping to support Google TV in the near future and that the company’s new Flash and Chrome browser support was part of the initiative to prepare for a TV-based operating system.
Tudor Brown also launched a scathing attack on bigger rival Intel, accusing the firm of “trying to retrofit its technology” for the smartphone and embedded marketplace. He claimed, however, that the attempts would fail miserably.
MSI’s answer is blowing in the wind
MSI hedged its bets both between operating systems and chip makers, unveiling two similar tablets dubbed “WindPad 100” and “WindPad 110” respectively. The 100 is a Windows 7 Intel Atom powered tablet offering, while the 110 is an Android version running on Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor. Both weigh about 800 grams, sport 10 inch touchscreens, a 1.3 million pixel webcam and mic, USB ports, a mini HDMI port, SD card reader a SIM card slot, GPS and the ability to hook up to both 3G and WiFi. You can read more here.
Acer gets book-smart
Local Taiwanese firm Acer has been busy, announcing a brand new 6-inch E Ink display e-reader dubbed LumiRead with two GB of flash memory – enough for around 1500 books – and a MicroSD slot for those bookworms requiring even more e-literature. The device also boasts a QWERTY keyboard and an ISBN scanner so users can scan the barcode of any book they want and automatically add it to a wish-list or find it quickly online. Like any e-reader worth its salt, the LumiRead can connect to the internet via either 3G or Wi-Fi. Acer says it has partnered with both Barnes & Noble and German e-book seller Libri.de to provide reading material for the devices, which should launch in the third quarter in the US for an as of yet undisclosed price.
Aside from e-readers, Acer was also showing off its latest smartphone offering, the Nexus One-alike Stream. Android 2.1 (Éclair) powered and with a 3.7-inch OLED touchscreen display, Stream also boasts a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, 2 GB of internal memory, 720p HD video playback and recording, a five megapixel camera, GPS, a HDMI port and of course the ubiquitous 3G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capability expected of any modern smartphone. Pricing wasn’t announced, and it’s believed the phone will only be sold in Europe and Asia, although carriers are still undisclosed.
Innovative Converged Devices brings tablets to the kitchen table
Innovative Converged Devices, which specializes in NVIDIA chipset technologies running Google and Windows operating systems is showing off its Vega tablet which – at a whopping 15.6 inches (1366 x 768) of touchscreen – is more table than tablet.
The Vega sports the much-talked-up-still-virtually-unseen NVIDIA Tegra 2 Processor and runs Android 2.0. Other features include 512 MB Flash memory plus an SD card slot for more storage options, a 1.3 MP webcam and mic, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with 3G compliance (with SIM), a light sensor and inbuilt accelerometer. Battery life is said to be around four hours.
ICD reckons the device will be particularly useful in the kitchen, where family members can prod at it with their grubby fingers to write each other messages, to-do lists, or check each other’s calendar.
Even more tablets from AMtek
In case you aren’t already bored of tablets, AMtek is also showing off a few at this week’s Computex show. We’re told the new iTablet models and T23 series will be on display, with “Speed-Lite” models running the chip gamut from NVIDIA’s Tegra 2, to Freescale’s 800MHz CPU and Intel Atom Menlow-XL Z530.
All three iTablet models have 10.1-inch multitouch displays with LED-backlighting, three USB 2.0 ports, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth and optional 3G and GPS.
And Eee-ven more from Asus
Local computer maker Asus also announced a couple of Eee-Pad tablets on Monday in Taipei. Both tablets are Windows based and running on Intel platforms. The smaller of the two (EP101TC) runs something called “Windows Embedded Compact 7,” has a 10-inch screen, is just 12.2mm thick and weighs in at 675g. The bigger model (EP121) sports a 12-inch screen, runs Windows 7 Home Premium and boasts an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a purported 10 hours of battery life – which if true, is the same as the iPad.
“Now CE here…” Microsoft may add an operating system to the tablet game
We’re hearing murmurings that Microsoft may have some big(gish) announcements to make this week at Computex, especially with regard to Windows CE 7 for tablets.
Word on the Taiwanese street is that the Redmond giant has about 60 products running Microsoft technology to be announced by partners this week.
And while much ado has been made about Windows 7 of late, it is believed the software giant’s oft forgotten CE operating system may find its way into several consumer electronics devices.
Windows CE certainly seems to have what it takes with a good enough browser, support for Silverlight and Flash [take that, Apple], DNLA capabilities and Media Transfer Protocol support.
Computex Bits ‘n Bytes – Day Zero
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