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Switched On: Apps like to Movit, Movit
Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. Not every company producing smartphones cares much about other kinds of portable devices, but those that do can heed a lesson from Apple. By leveraging the popularity, platform, and distribution of the iPhone, Apple deftly created the market for iPod touch applications. One would now be hard-pressed to name another non-cellular handheld device that has access to as many modern applications as Apple's flagship digital media player. Under some definitions, it has become the first mass-market Mobile Internet Device (or MID). Targeting both phone and non-phone platforms has allowed Apple to greatly increase the installed base for iPhone applications. Last month, Apple announced that it had shipped 17 million iPhones, and 13 million iPod touches, increasing the base of devices for "iPhone" applications 76 percent. Convergent devices like the iPhone and iPod touch are often looked at in terms of their potential to cannibalize a wide swath of other kinds of portable devices. These include the popular (digital cameras, portable navigation devices, handheld gaming platforms), the obscure (remote controls for presentation programs and the Sonos multi-room music system), and the humble (alarm clocks, calculators and pedometers).
GiiNii's Movit Mini Android tablet coming in October, Movit Maxx in January
We were pretty stoked by GiiNii's Movit Mini when we got some hands-on time with it at CES this year, and while the 4.3-inch, Android-powered tablet was originally due out in the middle of this year, the company's now targeting an October 1st ship date for the Mini and January 1st, 2010 for the 7-inch Max. Specs look to be the same as before, although given the new date we'd say Cupcake is now all but guaranteed. Mum's still the official word on pricing, but last we heard the Mini was expected to cost "less than the iPod touch" -- here's hoping the company manages to keep that goal.
GiiNii's Movit Mini WiFi Android tablet hands-on
We just spent some quality time playing with GiiNii's Movit Mini WiFi Android tablet, which might be one of the best things we've seen at CES so far -- think of it as the Android version of the iPod touch and you'll get why we're so stoked. The unit features a 4.3-inch, 480 x 272 resistive touchscreen (sigh), and it's got a soft keyboard for text entry -- they couldn't tell us if it's running Cupcake or not, but the keyboard worked just fine as we were playing with it. A built-in mic and front-facing camera lend themselves to out-of-the-box Skype support, there's also Bluetooth and a built-in speaker. Sadly, there's only 256MB of internal storage, but there's an microSD slot for expansion. All we got for pricing was "less than the iPod touch" -- we'll see how close GiiNii gets when this guy and the planned 7-inch Movit Maxx hit sometime in the middle of the year.%Gallery-40963%
