Posted on Thursday, June 23 2011 @ 22:13 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
DigiTimes
reports Acer, ASUS, Samsung and Toshiba are all developing ARM-based notebooks. These products are expected to hit the market as early as late 2011, with pricing said to be lower than $299. The site also mentions that ASUS is working on a 13" ARM-based notebook with NVIDIA's Tegra (3?) and Android.
The sources pointed out that ARM-based systems using Android were already launched under the smartbook name two years ago with Toshiba and Lenovo both launching products in the retail channel. However, due to weaker than expected demand, the related products were soon phased out of the market.
Since ARM's CPU has already been upgraded from single-core two years ago to quad-core with a significant increase in performance, while the platform's storage capacity has also seen significant improvements, and an enhanced user interface, ARM is already capable of launching notebook products that are able to run for a long period of time, and if the price is attractive, there is a great chance for the products to create a brand new market segment in the IT industry.
