December 2010

Taiwan OEMs beefing up on tablet technology
According to an article in the Taipei Times, leading Taiwanese OEMs are heavily investing in touch panel and tablet technologies. Compal, which is the world's second largest notebook contract manufacturer, is making a major investment in its brand-new Henghao Technology Co subsidiary that will be used for the purchase of a 4.5G Color Filter fab (see agreement) from Chunghwa Picture Tubes that can produce over 3 million touch sensor panels per month (from the specs, it appears 7-inch wide-screen). In addition to setting up Henghao Technology for glass-type projected capacitive touch-panel business, Compal also established a joint venture with Sitronix, a company that has developed voltage-driven multi-touch technology. -- Posted Wednesday, December 29, 2010 by chb

Numerous tablet announcements expected at CES
A whole flurry of tablets are expected to be announced or shown at CES in January of 2011. According to releases and rumors here and there, we'll see the BENQ R100; tablets from ECS, Asustek, MSI, IN Media; Compal and Quanta; Onkyo, and many more. Forrester Research predicts that tablets will make up 13% of all US computer sales in 2011, and 23% by 2014. -- Posted Wednesday, December 29, 2010 by chb

GammaTech D12C: Compact ruggedized convertible notebook with Intel Core i5 power
GammaTech Computer Corp announced the D12C convertible notebook computer with a 12.1-inch wide-format WXGA (1280 x 800 pixel) touch display with optional digitizer. The compact and quite rugged D12C weighs just 5.5 pounds and is geared towards on-the-go sales staff, students, travelers, among others. The device is highly configurable via I/O module that provide anything from additional USB ports to Smart Card, second camera, 3G wireless or GPS. [See description and specs of the GammaTech D12C] -- Posted Friday, December 24, 2010 by chb

"10 tablets that never quite took off"
This morning, one of my longterm PR contacts brought to my attention a feature entitled "10 tablets that never quite took off." It was published by itWorldCanada, which is part of Computerworld. Now Computerworld is one of the world's leading resources of excellent IT reporting, and has been for decades (I used to contribute to it in a former life as a corporate CIO), but the "slideshow" was disappointing and missed the point by listing some older tablets and mocking them. [Read more...] -- Posted Wednesday, December 22, 2010 by chb

"10 tablets that never quite took off"
This morning, one of my longterm PR contacts brought to my attention a feature entitled "10 tablets that never quite took off." It was published by itWorldCanada, which is part of Computerworld. Now Computerworld is one of the world's leading resources of excellent IT reporting, and has been for decades (I used to contribute it in a former life as a corporate CIO), but the "slideshow" was disappointing and missed the point by listing some older tablets and mocking them. [Read more...] -- Posted Wednesday, December 22, 2010 by chb

VT Miltope RTSC-2: Core i7-based ultra-rugged military tablet
The VT Miltope RTSC-2 is part of Miltope's recently introduced line of HARD WEAR rugged computers for demanding military environments. The RTSC-2 consists of the compact and very rugged RTCU-2 tablet and a vehicle dock that provides all sorts of additional connectivity and interface options. The tablet itself is the first (or among the first) to use an ultra-low voltage Intel Core i7 chip in this class, providing excellent performance at low power draw. The 10.4-inch display is exceptionally bright (1,000 nits), and the tablet underwent and passed the full gamut of MIL-STD-810G testing. [See description and specs of the VT Miltope RTSC-2] -- Posted Wednesday, December 22, 2010 by chb

Full review: Sprint Samsung Galaxy Tab
Something interesting happened in 2010. It was the year of the tablet, but there really weren't any tablets other than the iPad, which sold by the millions. But it was the year of the tablet nonetheless, with everyone discovering that tablets were, apparently, for real, just as three years ago everyone discovered that the iPhone, and what it represented, was for real. So everyone talked about their tablet plans in 2010, but only one company actually delivered an actual, live, real contender and alternative to the iPad, and that is Samsung with the Galaxy Tab you see here. Yes, Samsung delivered where others just promised, and that, too, may be a sign of things to come. [...more -- full review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab] -- Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 by chb

eMarketer predicts massive growth in tablet market
According to eMarketer, the worldwide market for tablets will more than quadruple in the next two years. According to their data, 13.3 million iPads will be sold in 2010 (of a total of 15.7 million total tablets). For 2011, eMarketer predicts 43.6 million tablets (34 million of them iPads), and for 2012 81.3 million (56.1 million iPads). Those are massive numbers indeed, and it'll be interesting to see if it all comes to pass. [See eMarketer article] -- Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 by chb

The Tablet Wars: Background and Outlook
Despite getting soundly trashed by a good number of industry experts when the iPad was first announced by Steve Jobs on January 27, 2010, Apple ended up selling about ten million of them in 2010, and predictions are that a lot more will be sold in the coming years. Everyone is scrambling to also have a tablet. Tablets are hot. The media now says tablets will demolish the netbook market, tablets will eat into notebook sales, Microsoft will gag and wither over having blown it with tablets, and so on and so on. Let's take a look at what's really happening, and what led to the current situation. [Read Conrad Blickenstorfer's "The Tablet Wars: Background and Outlook"] -- Posted Thursday, December 16, 2010 by chb

Full review: DLI 8800 rugged POS tablet
The Intel Atom-powered DLI 8800 is a compact, rugged tablet computer designed specifically for point-of-sale applications where retailers need to process payments, collect and exchange data, and communicate wirelessly both indoors and out. Of particular interest for POS applications is the 8800's 3-in-1 payment processing functionality that includes an integrated magnetic card reader, an integrated barcode scanner, and RFID for fully contactless payment transactions. Featuring a 7-inch touchscreen (or digitizer) and your choice of OS, the DLI 8800 is small and handy enough to be deployed almost anywhere, and tough enough to take quite a bit of abuse. [Read full review of the DLI 8800] -- Posted Wednesday, December 15, 2010 by chb

DT Research's rugged tablet lineup
For years, San Jose, Calif., based DT Research was ahead of its time with their lineup of "information appliances." Now the market has caught up, tablets are hot, and DT Research has updated its tablet lineup with the WebDT 312, the WebDT 362, and the new WebDT 390, all based on the 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 and either Flash or SSD, and all available with a variety of different operating systems. All models are also far more rugged than consumer market tablets, and they are available with a variety of data collection technology (magstripe, RFID, smart card, scanners), making them uniquely suitable for all sorts of POS applications. -- Posted Tuesday, December 14, 2010 by chb

iPad helps Apple get #3 spot in worldwide mobile PC shipments
According to DisplaySearch, the iPad helped Apple pass Dell for the #3 spot in worldwide mobile PC unit shipments during Q3 of 2010. HP was #1 with 9.5 million units, Acer 2nd with 91. million, Apple 3rd with 6.3 million, Dell fourth with 6.1 million, and Toshiba 5th with 4.3 million. -- Posted Monday, December 6, 2010 by chb

Glove-capable Atmel maXTouch multi-touch now available for up to 15-inch displays
The folks at Atmel are now shipping their new maXTouch mXT1386/mXT616 chipsets that can handle touchscreens up to 15 inches. Their patented QMatrix technology offers multi-touch with unlimited touch capability, low power consumption, and the ability to detect touches with a finger nail, stylus and gloves. If this sounds sounds too good to be true, it's not: Atmel's maXTouch is being used in various HTC phones and also in the Samsung Galaxy Tab (ours works flawlessly with gloves, even for multi-touch). [See Atmel maXTouch page] -- Posted Monday, December 6, 2010 by chb