Despite the recent popularity of Google Inc’s Android-based operating systems (OS) for smart phones, the open source software platform is not migrating to PCs nearly as fast as pundits predicted, the Taipei-based Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC, 產業情報研究所) said yesterday.
MIC computer systems analyst Nicole Huang (黃怡娟) said that although many notebook makers showed an early interest in the Android OS because of its free open structure and developer application opportunities, there are some obstacles to developing Android-based netbooks or notebooks.
“Netbooks and handsets are built differently in terms of hardware when it comes to battery life, screen size, computer processing power and memory volume. However, these differences can be overcome fairly easily,” Huang said by telephone yesterday.
What remains a challenge for most Taiwanese PC original design manufacturing (ODM) companies that focus on hardware design is the nature of Google’s Dalvik virtual machine behind Android OS, which requires manufacturers to invest heavily in software research and development (R&D) and put considerable effort into aligning software and hardware structures, she said.
The analyst also said that vendors hoping to beat the market could use the Linux x86 systems to avoid developing their own software drivers to enable and optimize Android.
“Without a common standard, global PC brands and ODMs would have to come up with their individual standards, which could easily create software/hardware alignment compatibility issues down the line,” Huang said.
Meanwhile, Google said yesterday that the future of Web browsing was in mobile phones, as opposed to traditional PCs, as more and more people use phones to connect to the Internet.
The Mountain View, California-based company said it was investing around half of its engineering R&D resources on delivering and upgrading new Android OS versions for 10 cellular platforms and dozens of telecommunication operators worldwide.
“Even though the first Android phone was introduced just 7 months ago, we have leapfrogged the open source OS over this brief period of time, with the introduction of 2 HTC Corp (宏達電) Android smart phones and one by Samsung Electronics Co so far,” Daniel Alegre, vice president of Google Asia Pacific Sales and Operations told reporters yesterday.
Industry experts expect a total rollout of 20 to 30 Android-based handsets this year and, while there is buzz about the possible introduction of Android-based netbooks and notebooks at the opening of Computex Taipei today, actual products have yet to be seen.
Acer Inc (宏基) announced yesterday that it had joined the Open Handset Alliance and expects to launch Android-based smart phones in the fourth quarter of this year.
In related news, MIC reported Taiwanese smart handset contract makers shipped only a total of 6.72 million units in the first quarter because of a push back on new phone models.
Despite the disappointing quarter, MIC predicts order placements will aggressively pick up in the second quarter and that domestic contract smart phone manufacturing business would “experience sequential growth of 50 percent and year-on-year growth of 30 percent.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained