Smartbooks Expected to Hit Market in Q4
Smartbooks, that quirky mix between smartphones and netbooks, has made us oohh and ahh at this year’s Computex, but we’ve yet to see them hot their stride on the streets. However, Digitimes has reported that we can expect them to hit the market in the fourth quarter of this year, with Acer and Asus both dipping their toes into the pond.
Acer is said to have an ARM- and an Adroid-based smartbook, and while Asustek, who looks like they’re skeptical about releasing the ARM-based netbook, will be waiting how the public would embrace them, they’re thinking of a product launch come November or December at the earliest.
Smartbooks are little computers-slash-big-smart phones which feature low power ARM-based processors that are less expensive but also slower, than the Intel chips we’re used to seeing in netbooks. But even so, they can support some really nifty stuff such as 3G, GPS and WiFi. The Smartbook machines is said to come with ARM-based chips including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and NVIDIA’s Tegra. Mobinnova, a Taiwan-based mobile device manufacturer, will use the latter in their 8.9-inch smartbooks. Most likely, these babies will be bundled with data plans and such.
Catch is smartbooks aren’t capable of running Windows. Linux, Google Android and Windows CE should work okay, but it’s pretty much a no-go for any Windows OS (XP, Vista or even Windows 7). I guess we can only wait and see.
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Filed under: Netbook Thoughts
[...] Expected to Hit Market in Q4 | Acer Review, Asus Review … Source: Acer Review, Asus Review – Netbook 10 – Tuesday, 4th August 2009, 22:12 GMT Smartbooks, that quirky mix between smartphones and [...]
We are now in Q1, 2010, and still have not seen a smartbook on the market from Acer or Asus. I guess that we will see them by the end of this year. But we will have to wait til 2011 to see them sell sucessfully.
However, in the event that Acer and Asus have to much old hardware to get rid of first, then we will have to wait another 2 years, before they will start launching the smartbook.