At Computex in June 2009 I had a press meeting with Anand Chandraseker and one thing he mentioned as the press challenged him about netbooks and smartbooks was the fact that Moorestown could make a good platform for smartbooks. If I remember correctly, the words he used were ‘a better smartbook than ARM-based products.’ (Analysis here)
ARM platforms are scaling well and in mid-2010 a multi-core ARM processor will be able to reach processing power levels that are close to what we’re seeing on Atom (with a single core.) The power envelope of a Moorestown-based tablet or smartphone won’t be significantly higher either so when you think about Moblin, its stability, its brand and potential for a lot of Intel-backed marketing, the code-sharing that’s happening with Nokia and its Maemo teams, its ‘appup’ store, its roadmap, and the support it’s getting from leading computer manufacturers you can see a lot of advantages over skinned WinCE, non-existent Chrome OS and re-hashed Android open-source models.
Proof that tablets and ‘smart’ devices are possible was given in the keynote speech and I’ve included the relevant 5-min segment below. You’ll also here a very interesting line in the first 20 seconds. Paul Otellini specifically mentions that Nokia is in partnership with Intel ‘around’ the Moorestown platform. That could be the software development work that’s going on (Nokia and Intel are sharing a lot of software across Moblin and Maemo) but it could be something else too!
Skip to the following segments for specific information on the key elements from the Ultra Mobile section of the keynote.
00:21 ‘We’ve announced partnerships around Moorestown with leaders like LG and Nokia’
02:00 Multipoint (3-way) video conference on Moorestown smartphone. (from Vidyo.com)
03:40 HD movie demo (720p)
04:30 Open Peak tablet demo. (Note e-reader application)
Next stop: Mobile World Congress, Barcelona.
New article: Spotted at Intel CES Keynote. (Nokia, Tablet, 3-way Video) http://bit.ly/cBRqNZ