There will be some readers wondering, as usual, why Faultline can’t just stick to its knitting and write about IPTV, cable and digital media and leave phones and the PC world alone, but there are strong reasons this week for taking a peek.
We are always fascinated by change and the Faultline concept is really about one company losing its grip on a market while another company, in an apparently unrelated area of technology, begins quietly eating its lunch (or mining its rich seam to stay with the Faultline imagery).
The appearance of the Lenovo Skylight at CES has that feel to it, but we also need to apply a little imagination. There are lots of reasons that make the Skylight stand out. It’s incredibly light, extremely neatly packaged, it has some genuine technological advantages, and regardless of operating system it’s a useful tool to keep you on the internet all day. The price is not compelling, but its potential for route to market is.
What is really scary is that Google has come to be aware that it is in a flat out war for the ‘next’ major platform, and it has a chance of bringing together some 30 smartbook devices or so behind its forthcoming Chrome operating system, a huge number of devices compared to the early days of the PCs, which backed Windows (we were there). Goolge is promising to make the new paradigm work.
This Lenovo device though does NOT have Chrome or Android behind it, instead it has its own Linux, which is probably a non-starter for a high volume device, but at least it had the sense to hide it from the view of the user, so that they don’t care what OS is under the bonnet. But this same hardware could, and will, we are sure, soon sport a Google operating system, most likely Chrome, and that will unify products of this type. However the price on this product is totally wrong at $499, and currently unsubsidized by any operator. Part of that must be all about the cost of provisioning and supporting the software, which Google can take away.
It’s not that this is a sure fire hit on its own, just that this is one of the world’s biggest PC makers and it has had the chutzpah to go out there and use a non-Microsoft operating system and a non-Intel chip in a device. It uses Linux and a Qualcomm SnapDragon processor, and there’s no way back from that, the chip just doesn’t run Windows (it runs Windows Mobile and CE, but not full bloodied Windows).
So this is not going to be a device which is launched as a non-Windows machine, only to have resellers complain and for it to transform into a ‘swing machine’ that can be booted from Linux or from Windows, unlike the ASUS Eee PC which ended up offering both Xandros (a Linux distribution) and Windows, pre-loaded.
Right now the current crop of Netbooks hitting the market using the Intel Atom Pine Trail N450 chip, all coming out at prices around the $350 to $400 range and one or two, such as the Toshiba NB305, promising an 11 hour battery life (which for some reason, given the N450 specs, we think is pure fiction).
So when one analyst described the Lenovo as overpriced, uncompetitive, using the wrong chip and wrong operating system, and suggested it would soon fall off the radar, we don’t entirely disagree.
It’s more about what this device promises, and when you add the fact that at the same show Qualcomm rival Freescale (it was the chip side of Motorola) unveiled a reference design targeting Smartbooks at sub-$200 pricing, then it all falls into place.
This is back to the original proposition behind Netbooks, which were supposed to be $200, low power, instant on, long battery life, tiny computers, which could get you on the internet for large periods of time, potentially including over wireless broadband, which did not have hard disk drives and used low powered Flash memory instead.
The idea being that less processing would be done on your device and more on the internet, making connectivity the major issue, and computing power not the issue.
But in Netbooks that definition hasn’t stood the test of time, because only now are Atom based devices from Intel claiming to have more than a few hours of battery (more like 3 or 4, not 11), but also they are underpowered, can’t do two things at once, and do very little of the work that a notebook can do and they rarely come with wireless broadband, and anyway, it is only Google is pushing apps that work on the cloud and Chrome (the operating system, not the browser) is not yet with us.
What has happened to the industry is that the idea which initiated Netbooks has been trashed by Microsoft, as it insisted that only a certain amount of memory is allowed on a Netbook, and by Intel insisting that its Atom was the only chip that can deliver on a miniaturised version of Windows. They seem to be saying, no you can’t do that yet, so do this completely different thing instead.
But this week at CES we are starting to see the beginning of a revolution that will come to fruition way before next Christmas.
In one argument I had over this Christmas (with a clever clogs doing a PhD in advanced theoretical computer science), the point was made that because 20 years of PC software was available, these devices had to run Windows, so Microsoft had to call the shots so they could not be based on Linux or on the Arm chipset.
But while most handsets, and therefore ARM implementations, only have operator and handset vendor written applications on them, which do the most basic things, at least 100,000 Apple App Store programs are processed on an iPhone, itself based on an ARM core and a non-Windows OS. We are definitely moving away from a reliance on a Windows world, simple as that.
When all the basic functions of camera, media player, notepad and spreadsheet applications are added to the more frivolous App Store applications, suddenly an entire software eco-system, devoid of the intricacies of Windows and its security weaknesses, is born.
What was really interesting was the way the person I was arguing with backed up his argument by looking up power requirements for chips, such as the Atom, refuting the power advantage that ARM has over Intel, and pointing out that any techniques for achieving a watt per MIPS advantage, were in the public domain and Intel would soon have them. At least three things spoilt his argument. He used a Linux notebook and Sony PSP browser to look up his arguments ‘ no Windows in sight, so he would have been perfectly happy on a Smartbook; and he found himself recommending the Freescale architecture, which is of course based on ARM, and he forgot that it is Windows itself that takes up all of the power, not the hardware.
An entirely new web based industry has already been unleashed among the early adopters it seems.
The fact is that the entire PC industry in 2009 was hijacked by this fear of Wintel based application power, and ended up offering identical Netbooks, which were too expensive and which under perform and link to the internet only through Wi-Fi. This is testament to how successful Intel and Microsoft have been at waylaying the Netbook concept. This is why the birth of the Smartbook is so important, and that will happen during 2010 at the behest of cellular operators.
Already at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Freescale has announced a new reference platform for the emerging smartbook segment. Interestingly, other devices, such as ebook readers, also share a similar paradigm to the Smartbook ‘ low power, cellular internet connectivity, always on, long battery lives, so expect reference platforms to not only take in the Smartbook, but also other related device types.
The Freescale effort was its second generation reference design for smartbooks, and it targets sub-$200 devices, which immediately puts clear water between its platform and the long rumoured Apple tablet and well as the Atom N450 devices. The next generation Atom will have to run Chrome, create lighter, thinner, smaller devices, under the $200 barrier, in order to compete, and it’s likely Intel can stay the course, except it will need a 3G chip.
Freescale uses its i.MX515 processor, which runs on the ARM Cortex A8, and can run Linux operating systems including Android and probably Chrome when it comes out.
Freescale calls its platform Sabre (Smart Application Blueprint for Rapid Engineering) and has partnered with Inventec Appliance for design and manufacturing services. The design will be ready for evaluation next month. One of the key strategies for Freescale going forwards is to target both ereaders and smartbooks.
So far, it is cooperating with Qualcomm, which makes more cellular chips than any other company in the world, including the SnapDragon, more than competing with Freescale. Both of them see the Smartbook as the true Netbook, and at least 30 devices will hit the shelves at some time during 2010, certainly they will have to make a dent in Netbook sales by the end of 2010, although they have no chance of overtaking them in the short term. In September The Information Network came out with a report which said that Smartbooks would overtake Netbooks by 2012. We see that as credible.
Once these gadgets go mainstream, from late 2010 onwards, Freescale and Qualcomm will go to battle in earnest and on past recent records, Qualcomm will eventually win out with its Snapdragon processor, similar in nature to the Freescale devices which this week’s reference plan relies on.
Which is perhaps why Freescale is aiming its first reference design at the low cost market, where Qualcomm is less keen to play. Qualcomm designs are different only in one key respect, they integrate the processor on the same chip that handles the cellular connection, what is called a baseband chip. Freescale, in a manner similar to Intel’s Atom, offers its chip separately, but says even so it can cut the Bill of Materials for making a device by $30 under the Intel Atom, even the new, low footprint Pine Trail N450 chip, which has stimulated at least a dozen Netbook launches at CES this week.
Also by moving to ARM, the operating system and the software can be open source, and far cheaper, and no-one is dictating things like how much memory you are allowed to use in the design, to artificially slow things down. Once Google gets fully engaged there will also be operating system development costs offloaded, a thriving development community and more cloud based applications
Freescale says it remains two years ahead of Intel in watts per MIPS (how much electrical power is used to generate computer instructions or millions of instructions per second), and Qualcomm a year ago said it had an 18 month lead over Intel. Intel of course for the most part must design chips with an existing instruction set, optimized for Windows, even when it offers Linux.
The Freescale Sabre design will facilitate instant power-up, always-on connectivity via 3G and/or Wi-Fi, and all-day battery life. A device using the Freescale design would typically have a 7-inch touchscreen with 1024 x 600 resolution, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, optional 3G modem and 512Mb of memory with 4Gb to 64Gb of internal storage. There would also be a 3-megapixel camera, 3-axis accelerometer, ambient light sensor and Adobe Flash Player support. One design variant also sports a keyboard dock.
What we think you have to do is look at the Lenovo Skylight, and imagine that it came out of the Freescale program, and that it can be bought for $200. Better than that, if it was given away with a smartphone, with both of them on a single contract of say $50 or $60 a month, with unlimited data usage. Later this year we know that at least some of devices will be down to sub $200, and they are sure to be sold by Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint in the US, and all the other major operators elsewhere, simply because they want the cheapest usable devices which will drive cellular data usage up and increase dependency on cellular data, just as HSDPA dongles drove cellular revenue over the past two years ‘ single handedly saving many operators from worst effects of the recession.
The Skylight weighs just 2 lbs is based on Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon platform (which combines processor and 3G connection in one chip), which uses multiple low power ARM cores for processing. It has 20 GB of onboard flash storage, offers a set of what it calls web gadgets (surely they should be called Widgets like everyone else’s) which we shown with Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon’s MP3 store, Twitter and Roxio’s CinemaNow and they can all be online at once, all constantly updated, and still give a battery life of 10 hours, which we actually believe, and it has WiFi and 3G connectivity, and its own user interface.
There are intimations that this device could be available as early as March and although it is not subsidized yet on the AT&T network in the US, AT&T DataConnect service plans are being offered with the device, which also gives access to 20,000 US hot spots.
The Skylight has a removable USB storage stick with 16G which you can fill up with video off the web and watch later. The memory stick is standard USB; it pulls out and plugs into any other USB source like a desktop or laptop at home.