CES 2012 and Device Rumours

This time of year is not about January sales, but CES in Vagas and the new electronic gadgets and devices on show or rumours afoot. This year may not be so exciting as previously, there are some very interesting developments.

Ultrabooks

There will be more tablets this year, but the question remains as to whether they are seriously going to compete with the iPad at the high end and the Kindle at the low end, or end up as RIM, holding the baby? Are the manufacturers going to avoid the tablet and concentrate on the ultrabooks? The ultra thin 'weightless' models that are now starting to flood into the market to compete with the Macbook Air. Its just as if everyone wants to be Kate Moss! Personally we have been eying the Asus ultra model for a couple of months. With laptops now weighing in at just over 1Kg why do we need a tablet? These models are not new, but the $100 per device incentive from Intel to manufactures to build them is. As a result there are expected to be about 50 ultrabook designs on show, costing around $1,000 and as we all need to upgrade some time, why not with a device that is as light as a feather..

OLPC Tablet

We have always love the One Laptop Per Child project and it is now set to unveil its long-awaited tablet for $100. The tablet will feature an 8-inch 1024x768 screen, a Marvell Armada PXA618 chip and 512MB of RAM, running either Linux Sugar or Android OS. It will be able to be powered by hand-cranking and even has a solar panel optional extra! We love the housing and design and it shows that a $100 tablet is now a reality.

We recommend viewing Engadget’s video review of the device.

Google tablet?

Rumours are rife again on Google introducing a low end tablet early this year. This would probably follow their tie ups with Motorola and partnership with Samsung on Nexus. However do they have the media to make it attractive or will it remain an also ran like many other tablets?

Wii U Media Console?

There are the rumours that the Wii U will support a touch screen in the next generation console. The feature will have Ereader features which would allow users to download not only books, but newspapers, magazines, comics but much more. The touch screen will be used in a typical fashion to scroll of flip pages and would make the Wii U a more services orientated console and widen its appeal to be more of a entertainment and media than just a gaming device. There are even reports that Nintendo is secretly building its own Apple-like app store for the upcoming Wii U console.

Reading on Kindle via solar power?

Finally, Gizamo reports on a new leather Kindle case with an integrated reserve battery that can store solar energy to power a built-in pop-up LED reading lamp for up to 50 hours.

An Indian Tablet for $35!

What impact would a $35 colour tablet have on the consumer, education and business? Yes we did say $35 or £23!

That sort of price would turn OLPC on its head and make cloud computing a given? It certainly raises some interesting questions about the cost of other tablets.

The Aakash (Sky) is a tablet designed and manufactured in India under a government subsidy aimed at the Indian education market and is to be also distributed to India’s small towns and villages. A potentially true OLPC strategy! They even have plans to sell the tablet internationally under the name UbiSlate and at a price of $60.Indian Human Resource Development Minister, Kapil Sibal, launched the tablet, handing out 500 units to students and announcing that they now plan to buy 100,000 of the tablets and that they hope to distribute 10 million units to students over the next few years!

The Aakash has been developed by UK DataWind and Indian Institute of Technology (Rajasthan) and is to be produced at DataWind's new production centre in Hyderabad.

Even before it has been evaluated many experts are doubting its speed, performance and touch screen capability. Some say that they have heard it all before, when in 2009, the same ministry announced the ‘Sakshat’, which failed to deliver. However, it is clear that governments realise the potential and even if the Aakash doesn’t deliver it is only a matter of time before this vision does happen.

Kenya: Why Not Digital Textbooks?

It not often you see the third world demand for textbooks and potentially a OLPC program brought home so starkly as in an article in the Business Daily Prices of text books. The report is about a 12% hike in textbooks in Kenya and that the government has felt the need to step and impose a cap on the increase in order to protect consumers from arbitrary price increases by publishers on approved books.

The souring increased cost of printing paper is blamed for the increase with a 30% rise in 12 months from $970 to $1400 per 1,000 kilogrammes. Kenyan publishers’ sources of paper include Sweden, Germany and South Africa.

However some publishers have noted that an increase could damage sales and kept their increases to single figures.

The industry sells books worth over Sh3 billion per year, but its over-reliance on the government orders has denied players sales beyond text books.

The government has introduced free primary education, a subsidy of secondary education and made frequent changes of syllabus texts which have not only driven costs but also made the government the single biggest buyer of text books.

In light of souring costs and increasing demand it begs the question of why Kenya and similar counties aren’t embracing the OLPC program and their publishers doing it digitally.

OLPC: Needed for the UK?

The recent Minimum Income Standard report in the UK proposed that computers with internet were ‘ essential for households with working-age adults’ but not for pensioners. Now we read in a report from the e-Learning Foundation, which based on data from the latest Government Family Spending Survey, claims that more than a million school children in the UK do not have any access to a computer at home and approximately a further 2 million do not have internet access. . It also concludes that children in the lowest income households were two and a half times more likely to be without an internet connection than the wealthiest.

Valerie Thompson, CEO of the e-Learning Foundation said, ‘Without the use of a computer and the ability to go online at home the attainment gap that characterises children from low-income families is simply going to get worse.’

We now face a situation were computer and internet access is seen not just a must for the classroom but the home as well. We also find an increasing drive both by government and companies in services, such as banking, phones and utilities to move adults online. But when is a computer an access essential and when does it determine one’s wealth?

We believe in the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project and its educational aspirations in the developing world but wonder if it now needs to be realigned to all. Should we provide computers to schools or computers to students. When we see OLPC programme it begs the question why education authoristies still expect parents to pay for what they now deem as essential kit and then in effect spend twice by supplying the schools as well. Why not adopt a cheap cheerful and practical OLPC and stop this emotional blackmail to parent’s who may not be in a position to respond.

The $100 Tablet Cometh

Would you buy a tablet if it cost $100 US? What if it was powered by a 1GHz Maxwell Armada 610 application processor that could encode and decode video at resolutions of up to 1080p and speeds of 30 frames per second using the H.264 codec? It supported live video conferencing, had a built-in camera and supported multiple simultaneous viewing screens? Throw in WiFi access supporting up to 8 concurrent users connected via a mobile broadband. Now lets start to wind it up further and have it supporting Flash 10, and Operating platforms such as Android, Ubuntu and Windows Mobile. Finally lets give it Bluetooth FM radio and GPS. Yes the price was $100.

It may not look like the iPad but for under 20% of the cost it delivers more than the iPad is likely to deliver for some time and like most of the real world it can multi task,doesn’t suffer from Flash denial and their are no gatekeepers saying what applications can and can't be used or even written in.

We have long supported the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. What we previously covered as a rumour was announced last week. OLPC has partnered with semiconductor manufacturer Marvell to offer children everywhere a real bargin that will surely make the difference and unlock classrooms and education around the world. 'Classrooms without walls' isn’t exclusive to the third world but applies to all kids everywhere.

OLPC’s next-generation tablets will be based on Marvell's Moby reference design and are focused on developing "a range of new educational tablets" for developing and US markets. The OLPC XO tablet will have a multi-lingual soft keyboard with touch feedback and access to more than 2 million free ebooks.

Many cynics will point to mistakes made by OLPC in the past. It's as if OLPC is fair game to be knocked whilst others just bask in the media glow. Whatever the past, if OLPC and Marvel can deliver the specification at $100 or lower, they will potentially create the biggest step change possible and meet the aspirations of offering children affordable technology and education. The prize is equally as big as the dream but if they succeed, their impact may be even greater than Apple’s and we hope the big educational publishers get behind this great opportunity.

We wish OLPC success in their mission and their XO tablet. There are many children who sorely need it.

Moby Tablet is a Whale of an Offer at $99

Marvell has announced a $99 prototype Moby tablet aimed at US students and to them offer real-time content, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM/GPS connectivity, high performance 3-D graphics capability full HD and full support of standard software such as Adobe Flash and Windows Mobile.

Marvell obviously have a very attractive price point and envisage electronic versions of textbooks being updated and refreshed continuously for a fraction of the cost of physical. They have announced a pilot program in partnership with the Washington, D.C., Public Schools, in which the company will donate a Moby tablet to every child in an at-risk school.

The Moby runs under Linux and faces its own battle with the iPad and Windows based tablets and also supporting legacy applications that don’t run under Linux, but it does comes at a price that is hard to resist.

We now start to see a ‘chicken an egg’ challenge. Will textbooks become fully digital first and devices merely rise to the demand and serve them up, or does every student need the device before they all the texbooks are in digital form?

It’s ironic that Marvel chose the same price point for the US student as OLPC did for the third world!

A Tablet A Day...

So the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is about to open its doors with two of the biggest players lurking outside, Google poised to announce its Nexus and everyone waiting to hear Apple announce its iSlate. Can we expect surprises at CES or will the real show be outside Vegas?

A tablet a day may be the remedy sought by some and we have already seen the impressive OLPC OX3 announcement and now Freescale Semiconductor has announced a new netbook, notebook, tablet or slate type design for manufacturers wanting to build a Linux tablet running ARM's low-power chip architecture.

Freescale prefers to call the new design a 'smartbook' , but whatever the name they reckon the 7” screened device could be delivered this summer for under $200 running on the Android platform.

Over to CES for the next in the tablet beauty contest.

OLPC Show How To Deliver Cheap Tablets

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) group has slowly gathered support but more importantly started to question what people really need in a laptop. Their $100 laptop may still cost $200 but has started to connect some 1.4 million children and education in the developing world and has been adopted in around 34 countries.

They have now announced the XO-3, a slim touchscreen tablet PC and claimed it will be available in 2012 at a price well below $100. This not only starts to change computing as we know it in the third world but also could have a significant impact across all markets.

The concept new machine has touchscreen, a camera, induction charger, and a carrying ring on one of its corners.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the group, has said that he hoped that industry would now copy the design for the XO-3. Well it certainly offers a real potential to all educational markets and potentially knocks the socks of devices such as ereaders.

The big question is whether the major manufacturers will compete and adopt cheaper and greener technology or continue to over engineer their offers and produce them to be obsolete in a couple of years?

One Laptop Per Child Scores Heavily In Uraguay

We have not read much about the ambitious one laptop per child initiative lately but far from doing nothing it has been busy and now Uruguay has just become the first country to provide a laptop for every child attending state primary school.

"Plan Ceibal" enables not just children but also many Uruguayan families access the internet for the first time. Over 70% of the laptops went to homes without a computer and in doing so a nation has been switched on. The cost may be higher that originally expected by its founder Nicholas Negroponte but the idea has been achieved and not only the children but their parents and teachers all benefit. President Tabaré Vázquez presented the final XO model laptops to pupils at a school in Montevideo this week and this means that over the last two years some 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have got their own laptop.

There are now plans to extend the scheme to secondary schools and pre-school children next year.

So Uruguay may have lost to Argentina in the soccer World Cup and will not be going to the finals but have scored heavily in their commitment to wiring up their population. It will be interesting to watch if others follow.

India to Produce its Own Cheap One Laptop Per Child

The BBC today reported that India is to announce a educational technology investment that will not only impact the likes of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) programme but the whole educational space. India's National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technologies, is due to be unveiled at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, on Tuesday and as part of this India will announce its own cheap laptop. The total service will be based around the one stop Sakshat educational portal

The cheap laptop will be part of a mission which will include spending on e-books and e-journals for students, development of translation tools, upgrades to educational networks. The speculation suggested that the laptop is likely to cost $100 (£70) and is being developed at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. If this cost were to be achieved it would pose a serious thret to the OLPC and the Intel Classmate but could also mark a significant step change in the wider market outside of education.

OLPC Continues

We have long supported the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which develops low-cost education-oriented mobile computers to sell to governments in developing countries. Today the organisation through the United Nations Relief Workers Agency (UNRWA) has donated 5,000 units of its flagship XO laptop to Palestinian children in the Gaza strip.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which developed the low-cost XO education laptop for developing countries, has already revealed plans for its next-generation mobile computing device. The clamshell design of the new laptop is modelled after a book and the new system is to sell for $75 per unit and will be available in 2010. It is planned that the system will be smaller and lighter than the XO and can also be opened up completely flat to provide a single continuous touch-screen surface Like the XO, it will use unique dual-mode display which is readable under direct sunlight.

However, OLPC is experiencing difficulties and founder Nicholas Negroponte has revealed that the organization cutting half of its staff and significantly scaling back its software development efforts. The organization is said to have experienced significant internal disputes which have led to the departure of several participants and there are now questions being raised whether even the organization will last long enough to deliver the new system.

Whatever the outcome OLPC has pushed many boundaries and demonstrated that costs can still be cut without sacrificing innovation. We hope that the programme moves forward.

A Conflict of Interest

We have written before about Nicholas Negroponte’s , One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) mission to develop and deploy a laptop for under $100 that could be distributed to millions in the developing world bringing them education, enlightenment and information. The laptop has been with us now for a short while and has morphed into the XO. The technology deployed is ground breaking not only in its cost but its innovation. So why have only hundreds of thousands and not millions been ordered and used?

Yesterday’s Sunday Times article, ‘Why Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the XO $100 laptop’ tells the story of how the big technology companies effectively set out to undermine and squash the project. Why - To protect their own economic models and self interest.

The lesson we should note is that self interest often works at odds with others and when something radical appears that could potentially threaten the instinct is often to squash it. Publishing today has many Gorillas in its mist. We need to ensure that their objects and goals are understood and that they do not unduly conflict with those of the market and industry.

We also have to be aware of the huge potential the XO has to bring digital content to all and even change what we think about ebooks and ereaders.