Tablets will be the interesting Google-Apple fight

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Tablets will be the interesting Google-Apple fight

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 6 January, 2010

So Google duly unveiled its first own-branded smartphone, the Nexus One, looking remarkably like the iPhone. Nexus vs iPhone? Already a tired debate. The real interest is in another stand-off between these two formerly friendly companies, if both announce tablets this month as expected. And while they keep the market waiting, others were quick to jump on the tablet or smartbook bandwaggon at the CES show.

Some had thought Google might show a 'Chrome Tablet' at the event, held yesterday at its Silicon Valley headquarters, where the Nexus One appeared. They were disappointed, but this device could still be previewed to selected customers behind the scenes of CES in Las Vegas. Google is thought to be working with HTC as its hardware partner - as with Nexus One - on a tablet to showcase its new Chrome OS, and the browser-based web experience this will support.

The chips inside the expected Apple 'iSlate' tablet, which looks likely to launch on January 26, are a mystery, though it may well favor an Intel Core 2 Duo, rather than the chips used in the iPhone. By contrast, most pundits expect the Google device to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon gigahertz processor, also in Nexus One.

In phones, Google had to make compromises on its vision of the open web. Tablets, by contrast, embrace the full Google concept of an entirely browser-based software world, with most data and apps held in the cloud, and accessed from always-on, lightweight devices with long battery life, touchscreens and an optimized web interface.

As for real tablet products, Freescale and Qualcomm were showing off their smartbook platforms at CES, and Lenovo came up with one of the first actual launches. It unveiled the Skylight smartbook, running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon, as well as a dual-mode netbook combining an ARM processor - for instant-on, low power, web activities - and an x86/Windows mode for high performance tasks.

The Skylight boasts 10 hours of active battery life and a 10.1-inch screen, with 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity, Linux and a custom Lenovo user interface, which makes heavy use of widgets, smartphone-style. It has 20Gb of on-board storage and will come to Europe around midyear.

For chip and components makers, the e-reader market has been a dress rehearsal for smartbooks, as Freescale and Qualcomm have demonstrated - first turning up in the Amazon Kindle, then moving on to 'create' the broader smartbook category. Ericsson's broadband modules unit is also seeing the e-reader as a useful entry point to new types of devices and the consumer electronics world in general. It has scored one of its first 3G module wins outside a smartphone or netbook, with the latest Sony ereader, the Daily Edition. This runs on AT&T's HSPA network. The deal with Sony is logical, given the existing Sony Ericsson joint venture, but the Swedish firm says this is just the first of a series of announcements in the ereader and the wider CE spaces.