More eInk and Chips Please

Its Friday so it has to be more eInk and Chips!

Last month we wrote about eink and chips and Freescale Technologies teaming up with eink to move functionality onto their chips. Now fellow chip maker Marvell is announcing a new ARM-based microprocessor tailored for the eBook market. The chip again will further reduce the cost of eBook eInk readers. Marvell claims that it has been able to cut about 15% of the costs of an eBook system as well as provide improved productivity in turning pages in less than a second. Marvell’s new Armada family of processors will now include the Armada 166E, which will run at over a gigahertz and is based on the Armada 100 series chip designs.

The original Amazon Kindle used a Marvell chip, but was replaced on the later Kindle with a Freescale chip. However, Entourage will use the Marvell device in its ‘Edge’ and another Marvell customer is the long awaited Plastic Logic Que eBook reader.

Nokia N900 Enters With Flash

So how many horses does Nokia want to back? It already owns the symbian operating system and has announced the Booklet sub-notebook computing device, which will run on Windows. Now it has announced the interesting N900 internet tablet, which will run on the open source Linux-based Maemo 5 software.

The new 3G device features an ARM Cortex-A8 processor and 1GB of application memory which means many applications can run simultaneously. It also has a high-resolution WVGA touch screen, HSPA and WiFi, 32GB of storage (expandable to 48GB via a microSD card), a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and fast ARM Cortex-A8 processor (the same chipset the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS utilise). HSPA and WiFi, 32GB of storage (expandable to 48GB via a microSD card), a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and fast ARM Cortex-A8 processor (the same chipset the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS utilise). If you get tired of ther touch screen it also has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Sounds an interesting offer and at around £450 it is priced about righto give the others, including the long anticipated Apple tablet a run for their money.

The switch to Maemo is interesting and enables Nokia to deliver open-source technology that has strong ties with desktop platforms. However the thing that caught our eye is the full support for Adobe Flash 9.4 which could open up many opportunities in the media world of film, video, marketing and online content.

Intel, Nokia and Flash10

When it comes to partnerships we see two or more players getting together that can change the market or at least make it sit up and take notice.

We have the world's largest chip maker Intel teaming up with the world's largest mobile phone maker Nokia. This "technology collaboration" could deliver mobile computing products even beyond the existing smartphones, netbooks and notebooks. However, all they are saying today is collaboration.

But both companies added it was still too early to talk about product plans.
The deal gives Intel its first real breakthrough in the multi-billion dollar mobile-phone market.
The partnership will centre around several open-source mobile Linux software projects and Intel will acquire a licence from Nokia that is used in modem chips.

Intel's microprocessors are found in eight out of 10 personal computers, while Nokia boasts around a billion mobile customers. This partnership obviously pitches Atom chips against ARM chips and accelerate the adoption of smartphones in the world from its current 10% of market share to the majority of the market.

Far more exciting is the news that Adobe Flash10 is coming to the mobile world for most mobile operating systems later this year, including Google Android, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian and Palm WebOS. However, no mention of Apple’s iPhone.
Developers will be able to get their hands on a beta version of Flash Player 10 mobile later this year.

Why is Flash10 such a big deal? Flash Player 10 will enable smartphones to offer a richer Internet browsing experience, support videos embedded on some websites and importantly enable web based applications and breaking the reliance on app stores and control.

Flash8 or Flash Lite has been available on mobile platforms but the new Flash Player 10 will bring an improved graphical and audio performance, across more mobile operating systems.

The big question is Apple who face so many challengers on so many fronts but continue to go a lone path. This could serious help the real contenders such as Android and Palm's WebOS.