ASUS' Android-based 'secret weapon' smartbook launching in Q1
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Oct 30th 2009 2:48AM
posted Oct 30th 2009 2:48AM
We got our first glimpse at a computing future filled with low-cost, ARM-based ASUS smartbooks running Android on a 1GHz Snapdragon processor all the way back on June 1st. Since then, however, the pencil-spinning boys in Taiwan have been poo-pooing plans to launch such a device due to what ASUS called an uncertain market opportunity -- or was it pressure from Wintel, we never can tell? Then yesterday, ASUS' Jerry Shen pulled an about-face at an investor meeting in Taipei with talk of launching a $180 smartbook in Q1 of 2010. Bristling with confidence, Shen goes so far as to call it a "secret weapon" in a category offering potential for huge, Eee PC-like growth. Well, with the first big-name smartbooks just starting to ship, even a dozen or so sales could be considered statistically significant.
[Via Shanzai]
[Via Shanzai]
6 months too late. sorry.
I have a large laptop. It's my primary computer. I have a smart phone. I would buy a ultra portable computer because there is a space between my phone, and my laptop where netbooks are just slightly to expensive to justify when you already have a portable computer.
If I had a desktop I would go of course for the netbook, but there are many people like me who don't have desktops (and don't want them), but want something slightly more portable then a large 7 pound laptop (really it's not moving it around though - It's the fact it doesn't fit on a cafe table while eating and such).
6 months too late compared to what?
ARM Laptops will dominate the world.
Goodbye Microsoft, Apple and Intel.
Oh Charbax, deluded as always.
These are never going to attain the growth than Netbooks have.
Of course, PC manufacturers are not going to realize this, and they'll be an explosion of them, followed by smartbooks for $80 on the back shelves of Wal-Marts everywhere.
it could go either way. some people said the same thing about netbooks. i think there is a market for these smartbooks but not as big as the manufacturers think there is. i think what they need to do is make them super attractive and portable and heavily advertise that they run Android. who knows. they might fly out of stores faster then we would ever believe or sit there and collect dust.
but if they are a bust and end up on clearance shelves for under $100, you can bet your ass im snagging a few.
Ill just wait for my WebOS smart book...
Web OS???
webOS.
The reason Eee Pc was so successful is because it provided minimal weight and Word/Excel capabilities. The only way these lower costs netbooks would be a success is if Google all of a sudden came out with an office suite of its own. I wouldn't be surprised if they did considering they have Google Gears and a web based word editor/spread sheet editor already working (albeit primitive). Its not so much the price as it is the weight and battery life. Even with amazing laptops like the Asus UL80Vt with an overclockable ultra low voltage CPU SU7300 with a whooping 12.5 hours of battery life, the Asus Eee Pc still beats it in battery life to battery kilowatt ratio (and weight to battery life ratio).
OpenOffice.Org says hello.
That is not true. The reason netbooks took off is because they are half the price of low to midrange laptops. You might use your netbook as a slow word processor but most people use them for surfing the web, email and IM and in that realm there is far more choice of applications in linux.
Don't know. They might have a shot. If they're SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than netbooks, which will be hard to do. And not built like a piece of crap. And they boot into the browser quickly. And their performance is acceptable. They might have a shot.
But the screen will still cost the same. The plastics and keyboard will still cost the same. And the RAM. And numerous other things. There will be a cheaper CPU of course, and a free OS instead of the $15 or whatever (x 2 maybe) that Microsoft charges for its OS. Will that amount to enough money to matter to people?
I think they're going to have to drive prices thru the floor, which will take margins down with them, to make this category successful. And they'll have to do real software development, not just the sort of stuff they've been doing till now. Not sure they're up to it honestly. I guess we'll see.
Don't forget cheaper batteries. ARM processor use so much less power than x86(-64).
When you use an ARM platform, all the other components are also cheaper, better embedded and optimized.
My £120 CnMbook says hi.
http://194.150.201.35/cnmlifestyle/cnmbook/CnMNB7BE.htm
Red leader standing by.
If smartbooks look that ugly, they'll never take off.
What's with the trackpad?
not sure but based on the picture im going to say no track pad. its a nub like on IBM laptops. (forget the technical term for it) makes sense for the small form factor. and this one looks way better than the Acer if you ask me. and i think ASUS are built better.
the technical term is clit.
I thought the technical term was nipple?
Hey, if I can get one for $150 and put Ubuntu NBR on it, and it comes with a reasonable battery life, I will jump on the offer. I don't care what architecture it has as long as I can do what I do with my current laptop:
*Surf the web
*Type up a paper
*Play little solitaire games
*Instant message including some video chat (Skype or GTalk)
*Watch online and offline videos
A smartbook would do all those except for GTalk and Skype. Skype wouldn't run at all on ARM, but you could use Skype (through Pidgin), but it'd be IM only.
Replace the second instance of Skype with GTalk.
Skype will not run at all on ARM ?.... What about Skype that is currently available for Nokia Maemo, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Iphone etc...
Skype has been running on ARM for a long while.
GTalk video works in Pidgin or Empathy as well. :P
dual boot XP embedded + android, i'd take one.
oh yah, ARM. doh.
They're never going to take off period. There's a reason that people constantly returned Linux netbooks more frequently than their Windows counterpart. Hell, the first netbooks were all Linux-based and market-pressure forced Windows on there. Most people in the general public want to use the same programs that they're used to, and in general that's Windows and MS Office. ARM ports of Abiword and Gnumeric just aren't going to cut it for non-geeks.
There will be a niche market for them, but never going to get anywhere near netbook penetration.
Consumers aren't confused that their phone doesn't run their beloved programs. They just need the same mentality for smartbooks.
Well, good luck to you and to Asus convincing people of that. I just don't see it happening. Like I said, people are just way too comfortable with what they know.
People will love it because it will be 2x cheaper, 2x lighter, 2x more compact and work 4x longer on a battery than Microsoft and Intel.
Linux what? People absolutely don't care as long as they get a perfect fully functioning Chrome browser on it.
Lol, The picture that shown is Gnome so i doubt if it android
(it can be if android as unix-like kernel)
yet im not sure...
Looks like XFCE to me.
Well if it has USB ports you can through any distro on their that supports ARM.
I have deliberately put off buying an Atom based netbook all this year waiting for these cheaper ARM based smartbooks. The magic part is "cheaper" and if they really come in at 50% the price of a cheap netbook then they will totally replace the current netbook space. High end HD playing models should still be significantly chaper than the equiv high end Atom netbooks. I doubt they will start off that cheap but they will eventually get down to that level in a few years when mass production ramps up.
Okay so I am a linux user and don't care about M$ applications but one thing some people forget is that these devices will almost universally come with 3G chips built into the SoCs (at little extra manufacturing cost) so they will provide an "always on data anywhere" experience and, like a mobile phone, be that "other device" rather than one that needs to be used for word processing, so if they cannot run Word and Excell then I really REALLY do not think most people will give a crap for the price these devices will cost. They will also be cheaper then equivalent mobile phones (no need to miniaturize everything) so once we can use the 3G chips for voice, with a bluetooth headset, then a lot of people will consider using one of these devices instead of having both a mobile phone and netbook/laptop (as long as the smartbook is in the same room it'll work just as well as a mobile+headset) so they will eat into both the smaller and larger device space and the means (potentially) massive sale and deployment in 5 years. If so then the corresponding drop in price from mass production will further fuel the takeup.
In my country I can buy a reasonable mobile phone right now for about $400 and a mid-range netbook for about $600 but if I could buy a device that would do the job of both for $300 then what do you think I, my mother, father, brother and sister are all going to get for Xmas!!!
Bring it on, these things are going to be massively popular.
Just think of holding a smartbook to your head. o.0 Bad idea.
"bluetooth headset"
What IF .. its a tablet?
Not just a run of the mill netbook running Android.
But at that price ($180) I doubt it sadly..
That's a standard xfce desktop, complete with launch panel at bottom, 4 virtual desktops upper left next to the task bar, the systray on the right, and some basic desktop icons on the workspace.
A Dumb Investor Meeting, probably? They wouldn't get away with this one on any technology conference. I would buy this one: it probably runs the ARM port of Debian, which by any means is 10.000 fold more flexible than the java-apps-over-Linux-kernel Android is. With 3G and 10/100Lan, you can even turn it into a router/firewall/gateway :P or with wifi, a cheap NAS server for home :D
lol
Jean-Philippe
Love the thickness
That's what she said.
(yes, I'm even kicking myself for that)
and my interest in getting an ebook or a higher-end netbook/low-end ultraportable just fell back to nil again as I wait for this to pan out.
this is interesting..it's the price range the netbooks supposed to be. if it's enough for web surfing/flash/online-radio then i'm in. Netbooks are just too expensive for their capabilities...go dragon go!
Believe me, for $180, they will take off whatever OS is on them. At this price range people will do compromise since the cheapest Windows machine will be $100 away.
However, Ubuntu Netbook Remix would be the ideal choice for them, not Android. Currently, Android is still better suited for mobile phones, while UNR is fully optimised for the netbook range.
OpenOffice will be on them just like on then original eeePC, so Excel and Word is not a problem at all.
I believe Skype will be quickly ported to ARM. The dedicated Skype phones (like my RTX Duealphone) are very likely ARM based even now so the Skype kernel is already ported. The GUI will likely need only a recompilation of the stock Skype 2.0 for Linux and some minimal porting so that is easily doable for Skype.
Flash 10 for ARM was announced months ago, very likely in the final phase of testing/release, so youtube/flash applets are not a problem.
Java 6 for ARM was completely ported and certified for Snapdragon so standalone Java apps and browser applets will run fine (I use some Java apps I wouldn't like to get parted with, like RSSOwl, TimeslotTracker...etc).
All in all, a smartbook at $180 with a 1 Ghz Snapdragon, 1Gb RAM, Ubuntu Netbook Remix could be a solid offering for quite a lot people.
Android + Chrome browser + few customizations for large resolution and keyboard/mouse input = Chrome OS.
So expect the ARM laptops to actually run the full Chrome browser, what else do you really need?
@cloud858rk: On the one hand, yes, having OOo would be cool on your phone. On the other hand, running an X server on your phone doesn't seem like the greatest idea ever (bloat/power consumption). If I'm not mistaken, Android uses something unique and completely different from an X server to display windows, so it would take some work porting the application over to Android. The fact that OOo is built in Java might also present a performance issue and therefore might need a port to the NDK in order to be usable on a phone.
All that said, it would be really great if we could get OOo on Android. I imagine it would be a lot of work to do that (and I, for one, am not gonna do it cause I don't have the slightest clue how). Therefore I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
Of course, this shouldn't stop Google from creating a Google Docs application for Android. Maybe its already in the works?
This is going to be next big things after netbook..an end of Wintel era. People would love to have it for net surfing, chat, social networking and music listening. Pixel Qi screen and Ubuntu Netbook Remix ( optimised for smartbook) would be additional advantage for it.
@cloud858rk - but people won't apply that smartphone-mentality to smartbooks. They look like netbooks, which look like smaller notebooks, which means uninformed people automatically expect their familiar environment on them (Windows)...
Tablet may have a better shot at being perceived as something new, but then again imho tablets are an area where blogging mindshare/hyping and real-life demand are completely different.
The advantage with a "smart book" will be battery life. Xfce is very functional and light weight, using little space and memory.
I received the ASUS EEE PC Seashell 1005HA-PU17-BU 10.1-Inch Blue Netbook two days ago. My initial impression is that this is a great computer. Below are more specific comments. Great !! ASUS Netbook.
@ganhisfist
OpenOffice is mostly written in C, only some smaller components are written in Java. So it cannot inherit any slowness from Java (not that Java is slow nowadays). OO is released for all major OSs like Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
Yes, OpenOffice will not easily be ported to Android since it doesn't have the X-server which is needed by the Linux port of OO.
I don't think that Android is any good for the smartbook category. This category requires a "decent" OS like Ubuntu UNR (or the full Ubuntu Desktop Edition) not Windows CE, Android or other phone oriented OSs.
Windows XP or 7 would be successful in this category, only they don't have an ARM/snapdragon port while Ubuntu does.
Smartbook??? More like dumb book. Eh?
Oh hey! H/PCs!