In a brief Facebook update today Bluestacks, the company that makes an Android app ‘player’ for X86-based PCs, has alluded to an Ultrabook-related announcement at CES.
No more information has been given but it wouldn’t be wrong to consider that they might have had a bit of funding from the Intel Capital Ultrabook fund and that they’re preparing an Ultrabook-optimised Android application player (Hypervisor to give it its correct term) for Ultrabooks. Take the thought one stage further and wouldn’t it be interesting if they teamed up with Intel’s AppUp team to support application payment and download in one place. the idea has legs but may take a while to bring to fruition.
We’re on our way to CES in Las Vegas! I’m traveling out today and will arrive 20+ hours later, today, with events starting tomorrow. It’s going to be a fantastic week of Ultrabooks and alternatives and hopefuly the NP350 and Galaxy Tab, Nokia N8, Clear MiFi and Lumix FZ150 will help me keep you all up to date. (More detail on the kit i’m using is available here.)
Obviously i’ll be posting here but i’m also covering netbooks and tablets for UMPCPortal and Carrypad – at least as much as I can do!
The LG Xnote Z330 has already been announced in South Korea with confirmation that it’s coming to Europe but it looks like we’ll get our first chance at hands-on at CES next week. LG will be showing the Z330 along with a 14” version, the Z430.
I’ve had a great, although not exactly easy 2 weeks away from the desk for the Christmas period and I’m relieved to see that there wasn’t much in the way of Ultrabook news that I missed. In fact, the only real news was the availability, competitive pricing and interesting specification information for the Samsung NP530 13” Ultrabook that I discovered just minutes before Christmas Day. The Verge has a tip on a potential 14” HP Spectre Envy Ultrabook too but there’s really no information on that yet.
Brad Linder of Liliputing has an article up today about the lack of Dell Netbooks on the US site. After a follow-up by Joanna Stern of The Verge, Dell has now confirmed it is dropping netbooks and, apparently, any development of notebooks on the Cedar Trail platform. The focus in 2011, according to the Dell spokesperson, is ‘Thin and Light.’
I have two thoughts. Number 1 is that the Cedar Trail platform doesn’t exactly equate to netbooks and I think there’s space for 11.6” ultralights on that platform. They would offer reasonable CPU power and with an SSD and a redesign have every chance of riding on the coat-tails of Ultrabooks to offer a very cheap and stylish thin and light solution.
The second thought, of course, is when are the Dell Ultrabooks coming?
Thanks to support from Intel I’ll be flying out to the Consumer Electronics Show which starts for us on the 8th Jan. CES is the #1 show in the US for computer-related electronics and is generally a showcase of products and technologies that you’re likely to see in the first half of 2012. Intel and their customers will have a huge Ultrabook-focused presence and we’re extremely pleased to be part of it.
Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of Nvidia has recently announced a major Tegra 2 win (Honeycomb) and a new project “extending the performance range of the ARM instruction-set architecture, enabling the ARM architecture to cover a larger portion of the computing space” so it’s no surprise that the CEO is positive when he talks about ARM.
I had the chance to watch him being interviewed by All Things D mobile correspondent Ina Fried last week at CES and with Galaxy Tab in hand I was put to the test in noting quote after quote of amazing pro-ARM comments from Jen-Hsun. How about some of these gems:
“2011 is likely to go down like 1995. We will realise that the personal computing industry was redefined”. Jen-Hsun is referring to Windows 95, the operating system that changed the way consumers interacted with personal computers.
“The most important architecture going forward is likely to be ARM.”
“Whatever expectation you have…are going to be fully met by mobile computing devices within the next 3 to 4 years.”
“3D on phone is a foregone conclusion. This piece of glass is is likely the most accommodating piece of glass for 3D”
In addition to Tegra 2, 3D and Honeycomb announcements, Nvidia have also taken a Cortex A15 license and have announced project Denver which appears to be looking to combine future ARM architecture (possibly Cortex A15, possibly a new license for ARMv7 or even ARMv8!) and running parallel with the Windows on ARM project. If Nvidia are chosen as the reference design for that, they are sitting pretty! An Nvidia blog post gives more info about Denver.
However, Nvidia talks about ARM like it’s the only low-power choice but we know that Intel are moving into this space too. In fact, as processing power requirements reach into the same 1W envelope, it’s the screens, radios, batteries and software need to be sorted out. An wild, uncontrolled third party app can negate a lot of potential hardware efficiencies. Also, if Windows 8 is supporting ARM, I expected it to also be supporting the new power features of the Intel platforms that bring it right alongside ARM. Don’t forget that Android is running on Intel too!
Nvidia appear to have an excellent leader, strategist and spokesperson in Jen-Hsun and it’s unlike any other company playing in this mobile game. The brand is looking good, products are looking good, strategy and partnerships are going well and given one or two more major wins, Nvidia will rise to the top very quickly.
Thanks to Ina Fried for (literally) last-minute access to All Things D at CES. Ina runs the Mobilized blog for All Things D and is on Twitter here.
In a brief Facebook update today Bluestacks, the company that makes an Android app ‘player’ for X86-based PCs, has alluded to an Ultrabook-related announcement at CES.
