Posted on Thursday, May 06 2010 @ 15:23 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
ARM marketing vice president Ian Drew claims ARM-based smartbooks haven't hit the market yet due to delays in Flash optimisation, underperforming sales of netbooks with Linux, and the sudden tablet craze spurred by Apple's iPad.
"We thought [smartbooks] would be launched by now, but they're not," Drew told ZDNet UK on Tuesday. "I think one reason is to do with software maturity. We've seen things like Adobe slip — we'd originally scheduled for something like 2009."
"Our target is mostly internet machines — it becomes sort of a requirement that they run the internet," Drew said. "[The delay in optimising] Flash has stalled it".
Drew suggested that solving the issue of Flash optimisation had involved "lots of heavy lifting" but once the new version of Adobe's rich media software is in place for smartbooks, that would be "very powerful" for ARM.
More info
at ZD Net.
