There are a couple of things I want to bring to your attention about the WeTab 11.6” Atom-based Tablet, currently available in Europe. Firstly, they’ve obviously got to migrate everything from Meego to Tizen now. They’ve released an up-beat statement saying they’ll be ready for the release in 2012 but my heart goes out to this company that put many eggs in the Meego basket. Yes, others have too but they had the first Meego product and have worked hard over the last year to bring updates to the users. I just hope Intel will support them with this move.

Meego, Tizen announcement from yesterday.

We assume that the planned upgrade to a Meego 1.2 based OS is now cancelled while all effort is put into the Tizen migration. We’re waiting for confirmation on that.  Confirmed. There won’t be a new Meego 1.2 update now.

Secondly, the WeTab might be an interesting product to buy right now. Not because of Meego and Tizen but because of Windows 8. There are few tablets out there that offer the screen resolution needed for the Windows 8 Metro interface and if you’re looking to write and test Metro apps or do some testing with Windows 8 on Atom in general you can pick up a 32GB version, with 3G, for just 349 Euro. Even more interesting is the fact that it’s being sold under the German Medion brand as the MEDION MD 98512. Medion have just been bought out by Lenovo. There’s hope for some funding there! Maybe they can take the Lenovo P1 and do something with it too?

Alternatives for Windows 8 testing would be the MSI Windpad 110W (AMD, €500 without 3G) and MSI Windpad 120W (Cedar Trail, not yet available) or the Samsung Series 7 at around €1000, expected at end of October in Europe.

WeTab – Tizen announcement (German)

Another tablet in the mix! Multi-boot possibilities set this apart from the ARM-based tablets.

The E-king range of UMPCs, by the company that bought the rights to the extremely productive (but very ugly) Wibrain B1/i1 and the slider M5 UMPC will soon have a 10” tablet offering called the Talent T9. It’s built on Intel’s Oaktrail and is said to be ‘the thinnest’ in the world. Whatever, China! What we really need to see is the device in action.

Specifications look OK with 2GB RAM, an impressive 650gm weight, an IPS screen and 3G options and there’s a big play on the multi-OS options that a traditional PC platform brings. It’s worth watching closely because Intel are working on Meego and Android official builds for this platform. The multi-OS claim is probably more important than thickness.

Click here for our tracking page including specifications, gallery and news items.

As for price and availability, we’re hearing about a September availability with some possible hands-on in August but as always, expect that to change. Pricing is completely unknown at the moment.

The E-King Talent T9 goes up against a number of other 10” Oaktrail tablets including the Lenovo Ideapad P1, Viewsonic Viewpad 10 Pro and the Samsung Series 7 Slider which we could see launched at IFA in September.  Here’s a list of all Oaktrail tablets.

With respect to Meego and Android for Oaktrail, look forward to news of that from Intel’s developer forum, also in September.

Update: We’ve had confirmation from Simon Thomas at Think4Mobile that this is real. They’re expecting a sample very soon.

Source: Industry contact and zol.com.cn

Go into our product database, select Tablet Devices (Windows), click the weight and screen size column headers and you’ll get a list showing the lightest 10” Windows Tablet. The only device that comes in at under 800gm is the Viliv X10 which, as we now know, isn’t going to happen. The Lenovo Ideapad P1will be dropping into that list very shortly as one of the lightest Windows Tablets there is. It’s a trend that’s happening more and more now that Oaktrail is here. The great thing is that battery life is going up at the same time and this one even has a digitiser layer. We broke news about the P1 when it was being referred to as the Ideapad Slate back at CES. Lets take a closer look.

Full gallery here.

Full specifications and news tracking  here.

The Ideapad P1 will go head-to-head with devices like the HP Slate 500 and Fujitsu Q550 as alternative dual-input slates but I have a feeling the P1 will get quite a lot of attention based on the name.

The 1.5Ghz Oaktrail platform is certainly not going to be a powerful one. Unzipping large packages will be a chore as will any serious multitasking but the battery life should compensate for that with something like a 6W average drain. Expect the P1 to last for 6hrs with Wifi on. The digitiser layer, 3G options, 2GB RAM options, 32GB or 64GB SSD storage, Windows 7 OS options, a docking port and a high-resolution 1280×800 screen mean this is likely to be interesting to many of our audience here.

The other interesting thing is the possibility of Meego and Android for the Ideapad P1. Lenovo have good relationship with the Intel marketing groups. The Ideapad S10 3T was used as a reference netbook for Meego development so there’s a good chance that the Ideapad P1 will get picked up as a reference Oaktrail device for Meego and Android and that could mean even longer battery life and a good reason to think about a 7” version. In fact, reading through the presentation PDF (Available here), it also looks like Lenovo might be offering an app-store. This could be Intel AppUp-based which leans further towards an Intel relationship and increases the chances of Lenovo exploring a Meego build. Yes, it’s a tenuous link but one we need to keep an eye on. Meego-based Chromepad anyone? Multi-boot on this tablet could give the user an important choice.

The Lenovo Ideapad P1 is, unfortunately, targeted for Q4 which means we’ll probably see it at IDF and IFA shows in September with availability in October or November. It’s a shame it’s taking this long to bring it to market as for those that see more than Engadgets fasion-focused eyes, this is an interesting option.

Looking like the same industrial design as the Iconia A500, this is Acer’s Meego Tablet.

Full credit to @ndeviltv and @ngde_live

More coming soon. I’ll be reporting on this over at Meegonews. Update: Videos, screen grabs and thoughts on the article.

JKKMobile and netbooknews are reporting on a new Eee PC X101 Meego netbook spotted at Computex today.

It’s thin, driven by an SSD, has an App Store and is likely to be built on the Oaktrail platform although that’s not confirmed yet. Update: We’re hearing it’s based on an N435 CPU! Stay tuned for confirmation of that.

There’s no indication of launch date or price either so we’ll have to wait for the reporters out in Computex to see what they can find out. What we do know is that the X101 will be targeted at government and education with a launch price of around $199

More details and embedded videos at MeegoNews.

We’re building the product page here.

This is a summary of the extended article published over at MeeGoNews.com following my attendance there last week.

In summary, we might as well call the MeeGo Conference an event for the core members, developers and vendors and not a showcase event. While reporters may have walked away very disappointed, attendance was high and there were great opportunities for partners to do business.

Highlighting a growth in the IVI (In Vehicle Infotainment) sector, Nissan were on stage to talk about their work with MeeGo and why they chose open source. ‘Time to Market’ was a theme repeated by other partners too.

The Intel presence in terms of partners and demos was stronger than in Dublin last November which could indicate lower interest from ARM partners. Nokia representatives were around though and rumours of an N950 grew stronger during the conference.

In terms of hardware we had a quick session with an Oaktrail tablet running Meego and the AppUp client and got some time with a new product from Indamixx which has been built on MeeGo.

You can find detailed information on all this along with videos and a ton of pictures over at MeeGoNews.com

Hat tip to @tnkgrl from Engadget who spotted this Oaktrail tablet running Meego with the tablet UX and Intel Appup app store. it turns out its the ECS S10 Oaktrail tablet that we saw at CeBIT which means it’s an OED product looking for a customer. You may or may not see this in the shops.

Working for our sister site Meegonews this week I tracked down that tablet and delved a little deeper into the device to discover it’s relatively light and makes a far better demonstrator product than the 11.6” Intel tablets that most of the demonstrations are running on at MeeGo Conference. It’s also got the AppUp store software pre-installed and you’ll even see a Skype icon. It will be at Computex next week (as will ECS) so hopefully we’ll get more information about when this is going to be available. If it’s not going to be available as an end product, may we suggest that Intel start giving these out at their developer events?

Source: pics and video.

There’s a full gallery available here and the video is shown below.

Via my report at MeeGoNews.

The first of the MeeGo 1.2 core images have gone live in the repository along with an official statement at MeeGo.com.

I have the netbook edition running here and i’m doing some testing although it has to be said that at first glance, not much has changed. 1.2 is all about core changes though. Here’s a list of the main changes.

• Complete MeeGo Compliance packages for ensured compatibility.
• GCC 4.5.1 toolchain with great support for the Intel Atom* micro-architecture and the Intel SSSE3 instruction set, as well as with great ARM support. It has Linaro 2010.09 patches adding hard floating-point for all known ARMV7-A chipsets including Tegra2 and Marvell chips with sub-architectures of Thumb2/Neon.
• Linux kernel 2.6.37, with support for Intel Atom processor Z6xx series family and Nokia N900 with working power-management and numerous bug fixes.
• X.org Server 1.9.0 and Mesa 7.9.1, for improved 2D and 3D graphics performance.
• Qt 4.7.2 and Qt-mobility 1.2, providing a rich set of APIs for creating compelling applications that include location, sensors, contacts, and messaging. The new version of Qt enables GLLE-only builds and adds multi-point touch support through XInput2 API and many performance optimizations. On the ARM side, it conducts ARMv7 optimizations and runtime detection for enabling NEON optimization. For Qt-mobility 1.2, it adds a new connectivity subpackage and enhanced camera support, it also adds libva and GLESv2 shader support.
• New Connman connection manager with a lot of bug fixes and new features like tethering, openvpn, setting proxy auto-configuration, IPV6 DNS connections and regulatory domain settings, and more.
• New Ofono telephony stack with extensive bug-fixes and features like support for many new modems, improved SSN and voicecall handling, multiple AT channels, call forwarding and SIM refresh, emergency calls without SIM/PIN, and more.
• Pulseaudio 0.9.22 with all required support for resource policy management, audio management, and phone calls. Supports bluetooth A2DP for mp3 direct streaming.
• Gstreamer 0.10.32.
• New resource policy management framework with working audio route in both IA and N900 platforms.
• PackageKit 0.6.13: supports more proxies, including http_proxy, https_proxy, socks_proxy and no_proxy; supports cancel operations while downloading/installing packages. Supports downloading raw RPM packages directly.

Here are some thoughts about what I think will happen at the MeeGo Conference.

Update: There’s an official release note now.

Shown at MWC this hear, this Fujitsu netbook gives us a hint at how early devices could be pitched.

With a basic N450 CPU the MH300 offers a no-frills netbook experience with a 3-cell battery for a local, price of $322 in Malaysia (RM999) which seems, to me, quite expensive. Any Malaysia readers care to position this in terms of price?

More details at this link

http://www.lowyat.net/v2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4225&Itemid=1

Thanks @erlern

Posted from WordPress for Android with the Galaxy Tab

Meet:Mobility Podcast 64 is now available.

Sashca, JKK and Chippy discuss the Nokia news from Fridays announcement and how that impacts MeeGo. We cover new netbook news and discuss MWC 2011

Listen, subscribe and download at MeetMobility here.

This is not the first time we’ve discussed the crossover between pro/productive/full-os mobility and the continuing threat/opportunities offered by mobile operating systems.

See: Mobile Changover – What’s Your Plan? for more from June 2010.

CES 2011 was an absolute whirlwind of crossover products and after a week of note-taking, I’ve put together a report. Following the crossover theme, I’ve published it over at Carrypad!

Report: Mobile Computing at CES 2011 – The X-Over Year

Don’t forget, Meet:Mobility Podcast 62 covers a lot of this ground too and includes perspectives from JKKMobile and Netbooknews.

During a snowy week in Europe I travelled to London and Berlin to moderate the the AppLab events being run by Intel. I learnt more about the strategy and details but also got some interesting feedback and feelings from the atendees. For those of you not up-to-date with the Intel AppUp Developer Program (IADP) let me try to explain I’ve got time; A 5hr journey back from Berlin to Bonn! Skip the first section if you know the history.

The story so far…

Intel have a strategy (a ‘Continuum’ in their words) of mobile and embedded platforms based on the Atom CPU core that stretches way into the future. The new generation of Atom-based platforms start to move away from the traditional PC architecture in order to gain a foothold in the ‘always-on’ category of devices. Unfortunately, there isn’t a Microsoft OS product that works well with these platforms (a first for Intel?) so Intel have teamed with Nokia to build an open-source Linux core that if focused on mobility and fits with both Intel and ARM platforms. That OS is called MeeGo and it is under the care of the Linux Foundation. Meego implements a user interface layer using the Qt product that Nokia own. The Symbian Foundation also use this in Symbian. A basic application suite is being built along with reference UI models.In order to compete with similar mobile products, Intel is also building an application store framework with monetisation possibilities. Finally, there’s a marketing program aimed at seeding the applications. That’s the Intel AppUp developer program. Phew!

Intel Atom platform + MeeGo core + Qt layer + Apps + Appup monetisation for new apps + pot of gold to stimulate the whole stack.

MeeGo is clearly critical for Intel. It’s also critical for Nokia. They are public in saying that next generation smartphones, high-end products, will be based on Nokia. It scares me to think of the amount of money that is on the table here. It’s also interesting to note that AppUp is already available for Windows and targeted at netbooks, a category that is merging with laptops and getting less and less attention as time goes on. Marketing efforts for AppUp and MeeGo have just kicked off with the MeeGo Portal on the AppUp website.

What is AppLab?

We’ve seen The Intel Elements AppUp event in San Francisco (Sept. Report here) and the first joint effort for MeeGo in the MeeGo conference in November.  Both were very big events. On a smaller scale, Intel’s regional offices are running their own programs in order to grow local developer interest and to make connections with ISV’s and finally, we get to AppLab, the events run by the Europe, Middle-East and Africa team (EMEA) who seem to be leading the local effort.

If you’re a developer interested in MeeGo and Intel’s new mobile platforms and opportunities, you definitely need to keep an eye out for events in your country. They are small, well-focused and bring some of the senior members of the teams to you. If you’re not interested in Atom, MeeGo and AppUp, then all I can say is that you need to keep an eye on it!

As you’d expect the events expand on what I’ve just summarised and go deep into explaining the MeeGo architecture, how AppUp works, what tools to use and what the platforms will be able to offer in terms of products.  See below for links to the slides and a video stream.

London.

A slightly busy exhibition of mobile applications in London (Apps World, Olympia) meant that the crowd was largely transient although it was good to see a core of a bout 30 people stay and listen to the whole 4 hours of talks. The crowd were from various parts of the UK with about 30% developers and 30% marketing people. Presentation detail was good but speakers should definitely aim to pep-up and tidy-up their presentations. To be honest, as the moderator, there’s room for me to do the same! This is a critical product for Intel and that impression didn’t come across despite the obvious excitement from the speakers when in a one-to-one chat. Intel should also aim to bind the community together under some sort of interest group created for each event. With many people coming from London it makes sense to sponsor user-group meetings.

Berlin

The mood and setup was convivial, the church-hall location surprisingly well set-up. The sessions and speakers went from top to bottom and as deep as was needed and the small number of local people (about 25 at the Berlin event due to some terrible Europe-wide weather in the days running up to the event) helped to create a real atmosphere of community that should aim to keep connected in Berlin. The specialists brought across their subjects well although again, a measure of excitement needs to be injected. For those in Berlin that are interested in connecting to other users, check out Mobile Freidae, an independent website and community that has already held MeeGo get-togethers.

Use Local MeeGo Networks as connectors?

MeeGo, AppUp, IADP and the related products are new, interesting opportunities and Intel/Nokia really need the word to be spread. If you’re interested in setting up a local MeeGo interest group and covering AppUp, see the MeeGo Wiki.

New News

These events aren’t meant for major announcements but if you listen carefully, you can pick up a few hints.

• The IADP team is going to LeWeb in Paris, France this week. There was also a mention of new languages for AppUp. Add the two together for the answer!
• The MeeGo SDK is coming for Mac-based development to add to Linux and Windows-based environments.
• There’s a desire to make some of the (expensive) software tools low-cost or free for MeeGo devs. The Intel tools (compiler, libraries etc.) are very Atom and power-focussed. If this happens it’s a major advantage for Intel/MeeGo developers.
• I’m getting the feeling that AppUp for MeeGo is coming in Q1 2010. Certainly the marketing is ramping up already.
• There’s lots of prizes, support and free marketing available for early developers. More coming in 2011 (Bigger, apparently.)
• Dixons/Currys/PC World in the UK are ready to push a AppUp on their products; Right up into Laptops.

Is MeeGo the catalyst?

One thing that was easy to spot at the events was the interest in MeeGo. It’s not difficult to see why because the ecosystem for Windows is already mature and splintered. MeeGo is connected with a new, clear and mobile strategy. It’s new too which means there’s an excitement about being first. As we go into 2011, I expect the MeeGo/AppUp story to converge although it will be interesting to see how Nokia markets MeeGo/OVI. In theory, Qt provides a way to write an app and put it across both platforms but that message hasn’t really gone out yet and will be quite the marketing challenge as both sides look to promote their own developer opportunities. Will Windows+MeeGo be bigger than Symbian+MeeGo?

More events planned? MeeGo Roadshow!

I asked Stefan Englet, segment manager for EMEA at Intel about future Intel AppLab events…

We will continue doing “AppLabs” to give developers a full overview of the Intel AppUp Developer Program, the support they [can receive] and the opportunities for monetizing their applications. Additionally we will set up a MeeGo road show through central Europe, providing the latest about the cool new mobile OS – stay tuned, planned for 2nd quarter 2011.

The AppUp team is at LeWeb this week. Keep an eye out for Scot Appland and Peter Biddle, both senior members of the core AppUp team.

As for global activities, we’ll have a chance to catch up with the AppUp teams at CES in January so stay tuned here for more.

You can also check out this forum on the Intel Software Network for more event information.

All presentations from the event (PDF)

• Marketing overview
• MeeGo overview
• AppUp SDK details
• AppUp Validation process
• Intel optimisation tools

More information.

• End-user applications site: AppUp.com
• Developers should start here
• MeeGo / AppUp Portal is here and contains links to all the tools.
• AppUp forums at the Intel Software Network
• There’s also a site, MeeGo.com/Developers for the MeeGo-focused
• Video streams from the event are here and here. (Low-Q recordings of the live stream)

The AppLab events were fun and educational and really underline the importance of these products for Intel. Next update is expected in just four weeks at CES, Las Vegas.

Although I didn’t know this at the time, it turns out that Antix is quite the multi-OS gaming platform. It’s a solution that allows purchase, play, sharing and trial of games between people and different devices running different OS’ (More here.) At the MeeGo conference last week I caught up with Costas Stylianou of Intel’s AppUp team who was demonstrating a multiplayer game.
While the game demo might be interesting, I think it’s more interesting to see Intel demonstrating a gaming platform thats is being ported to AppUp.

The demo is being done on a MeeGo TV platform and a MeeGo Tablet – the WeTab.

I’m looking forward to a multiplayer game of Raging Thunder with another netbook owner soon but watch out, it seems like I was able to play while holding a camera and interviewing Costas!

Just a few days after the first ever MeeGo conference I have the best chance ever to take what I’ve seen, heard and learnt to try and predict when and what will happen with MeeGo in 2011. When will versions ship? On what hardware? When will the applications store ship and finally, when will end-products ship both via Intel and Nokia funding and, importantly, through independent vendors.

First let’s remember that MeeGo is an offering to developers, OEMs, manufacturers and other non-end-user customers. Like Android open-source, it will comprise a complete core, a vanilla user interface and a basic set of core applications. Driver support will be limited to common open-source drivers, codecs for audio and video will be limited to free versions and there will be no applications store. While ‘hacker’ types may welcome the new OS, end-users are unlikely to be too thrilled. Journalists that don’t get the whole picture are likely to react with negative reports. Once again, remember that MeeGo on end products will be different to what you see coming out of the MeeGo project.

Let’s also remember what MeeGo is about. It’s an open-source project run by the Linux Foundation and funded by Intel and Nokia for a range of products from mobile phones, in-vehicle entertainment, TV, netbooks, ‘smart’ books and tablets. Intel need MeeGo for their new low-power platforms (Moorestown and Medfield, the handheld platforms, just won’t work without MeeGo although Android is also in the works for these platforms) and Nokia have committed to bringing their next flagship product out with MeeGo. The stakes are very very high for both companies. MeeGo will happen, products on MeeGo will happen and applications on products on MeeGo will happen. But when?

It is possible to get a product out using MeeGo today. The WeTab proves it’s possible but there’s a list of things that need to happen before ‘milestone’ products appear. I also refer to these products as ‘disruptive’ because they will be good enough to compete in the same space as the best-of-breed in their category. There’s also another category of important products and that is those that are not funded by the MeeGo partners. Here’s what needs to happen before the products appear…

Hardware platforms

For netbooks, the Intel Pinetrail platform works and is likely to be the only choice for most of 2011 and until the next generation of netbook platform is introduced. At that point we should expect a lean towards always-on and the addition of hardware video decoding and encoding. The Intel netbook platform should start to look more like the Oaktrail platform proposed for tablets. If we look at the ARM platforms, the dual-core Cortex A9 series of variants is looking interesting for ‘smart’ netbooks and focusing purely on hardware, it’s possible to build a netbook-style device on ARM today. The Toshiba AC100 is one example.

• Timescales for Intel netbook hardware: Now
• Timescales for ARM netbook-style hardware: Now

In terms of tablets, there’s a wide range of choices. Intel are offering Oaktrail which can support Windows for a desktop-like experience and MeeGo or Android for the always-on consumer-style experience. Interestingly Intel also offer Moorestown on which only MeeGo and Android will run to provide a consumer handheld experience right down to almost mobile phone sizes. in the ARM world we have a huge range of choices. We’ve seen MeeGo running on Ti (who work closely with Nokia and are likely to be providing the platform for the Nokia MeeGo products in 2011) and on Freescale, ST Ericsson and other ARM-based platforms. These platforms are targeted at the 4-10” segment for highly mobile devices and could potentially be used to make an ARM-based smartbook, just the the Intel Moorestown platform could.

• Timescales for Intel Tablet hardware Q1-Q3 2011
• Timescales for ARM tablet hardware: Now

For the mobile phone space, Medfield is the Intel platform that might appear in late 2011 (more likely 2012) and for ARM, lower-power and phone-oriented platforms are available now.

• Timescales for Intel Handheld hardware: Q2 2011 (Oversize smartphones) 1H 2012 (smartphone)
• Timescales for ARM handheld hardware: Now

Touch

For the phone and tablet market, touch is critical. The experience needs to be fast, multi-touch and up there with the best-in-class. For that, MeeGo 1.1 isn’t enough. MeeGo 1.2 is being built with multi-touch in mind and this is planned for April 2011. Products built on the Beta versions will not be ready for market until at least two months later so unless Nokia is doing their own private work on multi-touch with MeeGo 1.1, high quality products are unlikely before that. With the next MeeGo conference planned for end of May 2011, it is the perfect time to launch a product that will be available in June or July. Whether Nokia chooses to launch their product at this time is difficult to tell. With CDMA support not planned until MeeGo 1.3 a launch in the U.S. would have to be focused around AT&T or T-Mobile but with stronger support in Europe, it would appear likely that a separate Nokia event would happen in Europe for the launch of their products.

• Timescales for single touch products: Now
• Timescales for multi-touch products: Starting June 2011

Battery Life

Intel products will need to be built on Oaktrail or Moorestown for the best possible battery life experience. We are moving to a world where ‘always-on’ will be the standard. ARM-platforms are already capable of offering class-leading battery life.

• Intel Tablet battery life timescales (Oaktrail/Moorestown) 1H 2011
• Intel Netbook battery life timescales: (Oaktrail) 1H 2011 (Cedar View) 2H 2011
• Intel smartphone battery life timescales: (Medfield) 2012
• ARM battery life timescales: Now

Security

Security subsystems need to be in place for carriers and that didn’t happen in MeeGo 1.1. I’m hearing that 1.2 is critical for carriers so it hits the same timescale as those devices relying on the multi-touch user experience.

• Carrier security subsystems in place: April 2011. Products. 2H 2011
• Other products (non carrier): Now

Applications stores

As mentioned, OVI and AppUp are critical. MeeGo will only ship with a basic set of applications and for the best-of-breed consumer devices and to create the developer excitement that is, in-turn, a critical part of the application store, they need to be in place with payment systems.  With OVI expected only on the Nokia devices (Question: What application store will be available for ARM-MeeGo devices that are not from Nokia?) we know that it will be a Q3/Q4 timescale. For AppUp on MeeGo we are seeing some marketing campaigns starting now. Launch is likely to be on the Netbook platform first in order to capitalise on the existing Windows-based AppUp store and to enable MeeGo netbook variants to go out of the door as soon as possible. Remember, netbooks using MeeGo will not need any support for carriers, phone stacks, touch and other elements that can only be delivered with V1.2. Considering that V1.1 is available now and that we’ve already seen proposal OS builds from Linpus, we can assume that existing AppUp partners Acer, Asus, Samsung and Dell will be bringing out MeeGo options likely to drive lower-cost netbooks aimed at entry-level markets initially. Based on that, we should see AppUp for MeeGo netbook UX available in Q1.  For tablet/handheld user interfaces, this might not happen until V1.2 (It’s on that roadmap)

• Application store timescale for Nokia (OVI/ARM): Delivered with first Nokia handheld product after June 2011
• Application store timescale for non-Nokia/ARM: Unknown. Currently no support
• Applications store timescale for Intel / Netbook: Q1 2011
• Applications store timescale for Intel handheld/tablet: 2H 2011 (After MeeGo v1.2)

Applications

Applications are starting to work their way through already. In the MeeGo release itself, media player, email client, calendar, sync, browser and other applications are already being worked on and there are rumors that KOffice will also be offered but as any smartphone user knows, discovery, sharing, enhancement and customisation through 3rd party applications is critical now. There is already a way for developers to make apps for MeeGo on Intel and ARM ‘target’ devices(SDK available here) but there is no support for the Application store yet. Intel have already set up an AppUp/MeeGo portal though.

Preparing applications for OVI is another story. Ovi is accepting Qt applications which will work on some existing platforms and the Nokia MeeGo products when they are launched.

Monetisation (OVI, AppUp) will stimulate the developer ecosystem and this will happen in the timescales shown above.

Finally – When Will We See A Competitive Product?

What we see coming out of the MeeGo project is a demonstrator. It’s a complete core with a functional user interface. It’s not what we’re likely to see on end products. In order to make a competitive product; One that has potential to seriously distrupt sales of other devices in the sector requires all of the above milestones to be met. Hardware, Application store, touch, battery life and something we haven’t spoken about yet. The customisation, optimisation and branding process takes months and for a class leading product, could easily take 6 months. Adding in codecs, optimising and branding the content stores, optismising the base applications, checking security, spicing up the interface, writing the drivers and testing is a 6 month to 1 year project. Lets assume that with 1.1, the teams were able to start the process of building a product around MeeGo. In April they will get the features needed to finalise the product and then, along with the integration of an application store, you’ve got another 2-4 months of work ahead. The first competitive products, driven by investment from the core partners, will only hit the market in June 2011 at the earliest. For products from other vendors, expect that timescale to go into Q3 2011 because they will definitely hold back to see what Nokia do, what Apple do, how Android develops, how Chrome OS develops, how the MeeGo application stores grow and even, how Android on Intel develops. The first MeeGo products, in all categories, need to be very special to secure trust from external companies. (Note: It’s likely that Intel and Nokia will invest huge amounts in external companies efforts to get MeeGo-based products to the market.)

Note on In-Vehicle0Entertainment and TV

I haven’t covered these two categories in this article as we’re focusing purely on the mobile/handheld/netbook computing market here.

Summary

We could see MeeGo netbooks with AppUp as early as January with ‘features’ such as quick-boot, lower cost, a simple-to-use operating system with a social-networking slant. We’re unlikely to see too much excitement around these early devices though because platforms and applications need to develop to create products with any major selling points. ARM do have an opportunity to get MeeGo on a netbook-style device in order to create an interesting long-battery-life product.

Tablets could appear in the early part of 2011 as 3rd-parties are already working on UI solutions based on MeeGo 1.1 but for interesting multi-touch products, with an application store, this won’t happen until around June 2011.

The first MeeGo smartphone requires MeeGo V1.2 and won’t happen, either on Intel or ARM until around June 2011. That phone is likely to be a Nokia product and its success will be critical to MeeGo.

Everything up until this Nokia/MeeGo phone can be called Phase-1 – led by Intel/Nokia investment. If these products show class-leading features and the developers start to create applications then we’ll start to see Phase 2 products created through independent investment that are true indicators of MeeGo momentum. That story starts in Q3 2011.

Footnote: All timescales are estimates based on current knowledge.

The next MeeGo conference has been announced for San Francisco on May 23rd-25th 2011.

Want a chance to learn more about AppUp? I’m at the Apps World expo in London on the 1st Dec and AppLab in Berlin on the 3rd Dec.

Exactly one-year ago today I was in Amsterdam for the Maemo Summit. There was excitement all round as hundreds of developers talked about the future. The N900 was handed out and one of the biggest group unboxings ever took place. This year it’s different, and yet the same. Maemo is now MeeGo and not only are Nokia driving it but Intel and the Linux Foundation are also part of the push. On November 14th I’ll be traveling to the MeeGo Conference in Dublin where I expect even more of a buzz. 600 people from all parts of the ecosystem will be there to learn and code and we hope, we really hope that we’ll see hardware too. MeeGo continues to gain weight and I feel positive that it will be a major player in the future.

When MeeGo kicked-off in Feb I had already predicted that Moblin and Maemo were keywords to watch and strangely enough I even predicted the link-up two weeks before it happened. People still don’t believe that I had no inside information on that one! As MeeGo announced I picked up MeeGoNews.com and within days I started using it as my scratchbook for MeeGo information. Unfortunately, like many side-blogs I’ve started, my time was too restricted and it went stale.

MeeGoNews is Reborn!

Thanks to Dhruv Bhutani [Twitter], a professional tech blogger, MeeGoNews has now re-launched with the aim of bringing news, opinion, reviews and inside information to you about the MeeGo ecosystem. Dhruv is taking the editorial lead and running and writing for the site on a day to day basis. I’ll be doing background work with my contacts to try and source exclusive information, hands-on and reviews. Dhruv has a history of Nokia work behind him and through my work with Intel and other MeeGo ecosystem members we should be able to cover it very well indeed. I’m excited!

We’ve got a bunch of new content on the site already and there’s a Twitter account you can follow too. Our first major job through will be to cover the MeeGo Conference and I’m happy to say that Intel are sponsoring my coverage of the event out in Dublin. I’ll be there from start to finish and hope to bring you a non-stop flow of news and analysis. Question number 1 – Show me the products! Second question – Show me the App store!

One thing I want to do as soon as possible is pull together a resource list of other MeeGo websites. There’s no point trying to sit on your own in the blogging world so we’ll be reaching out soon. At the very latest I hope to drink a Guinness with other MeeGo bloggers at the MeeGo conference in Dublin. Sláinte!

MeeGoNews.com

In about an hour I’ll be starting the live blog from Intel’s developer forum here in San Francisco. You may have read new from the keynote yesterday but today’s keynotes are the more important ones for those looking at the Atom ecosystem of mobile-focused computing. We’ll see Rene James announcing a number of important progressions in the MeeGo, AppUp and Appup Developer Program (formerly Atom Developer Program) and all indicators point to big news. We expect AppUp to be announced as final (‘Gold’, out of beta) and we expect to see some new software partners on stage. Gaming and tablets will be on stage (WeTab has to make an appearance as the first MeeGo product.) Following Rene we’ll hear from Doug Davis from the embedded and communications group. I hope to hear about Moorestown, Oaktrail and Medfield in this keynote but we might see it more focused towards in-vehicle entertainment and SmartTV. They use different Atom-based platforms.

Live blogging with test and images will start in about an hour from this post. After the keynote i’ll be attending a special session with the AppUp teams so expect some more details later.

(Refresh this page to update – Sorry, no auto-updating!)

0850: We’re seated

0905 – Intro – Recap of Day 1 – Rene James comes on stage after intro video highlights user experience.

0907 – Rene – “Computing has transformed from something we do to something we feel”

"Evolution of tablets"
Tablets are not new.
Have been around or 20 years (old tablet shown)
WeTab now on screen
Breakthrough is due to touch, user interfaces.

Rene moves on to Intel Software strategy and the acquisitions: Cilk, Wind river, Havok, Virutech and more

[Note: We’re having some problems uploading from the keynote.]

Rene  highlights investment in developers and tools.

‘Support for Android’ mentioned.

Andrew Bond of Havok on stage talking about immersive computer games. They make game middleware.

0923: Demo of ‘cloth technologies’

Amazing cloth simulation demo. No more short skirts in games?

Havok announces that their technology will be freely available for people developing for AppUp store

0930: AppUp

450,000 users in AppUp
23000 members
Windows and Meego platforms.
Runtime applications are supported.
Rewards are mentioned. E.g. Developer challenge.

Grand Prize winner announced – Goal! Demonstrated on screen. I’ve played with this and i’m sure that there’s better to come.

Goal also demonstrated on MeeGo
Ported ‘within a few days’

Prize is shown – they win a car!

0933: MeeGo

Highlights:

DeviceVM – Splashtop – Meego Remix announced.

Rene highlights netbooks, netbooks. Gentech mediaphone (OpenPeak) also highlighted.

New tablet —- WeTab also highlights.

Stephan – CTO of 4tiitoo (WeTab partner and the guy I was on the plane with coming over!) is on stage.

MeeGo for TV now highlighted. This is something new.

New platform for Smart Television. Is this SmartTV?

Video being shown.

Amino now on stage demonstrating the MeeGo TV system. How does this sit with the Google SmartTV project? Confusing.

Amino system looks good. Smooth. HD. Cloud content integrated. Its shipping now apparently.

AppUp goes live / gold

Announces that AppUp Developer Program is the new name for the program.

Peter Biddle announces that AppUp is Gold.

0945 – AppUp Experience and ApUp Elements event (we’re doing a podcast there on Thursday) is highlighted.

New partners announced for AppUp.

Dixons Retail will use the AppUp

Currys will use AppUp

Croma will promote AppUp

BestBuy will promote AppUp.

Sega is in the AppUp store! Megadrive classics coming.

Barnes and Noble coming

Unity coming to AppUp store.

More details on these announcements later after our private session at 11pm.

Rene finishes. Doug Davis on stage now. Here’s the Atom section.

Doug Starts with Atom in the compute Continuum and some future thoughts. Telemetry, Digital Signs, home storage networks. Suprises us all (!) by telling us these products are real and are all internet connected.

Again, there’s the ‘port of choice’ capability statement. Windows, MeeGo, Android, VXWorks etc.

70M Atom cpus have been shipped into netbooks.
E-Series is a new series for embedded apps. I guess its Tunnel Creek

Boxee Box announced as an Atom-based product. Others too:

More talk about TV

10:09

New media-focused platform announced – CE4200 (Aka Groveland)

Partner and products announced too.

Mobile Devices:
Doug talks about the launch of Z6xx series CPU.
10x in thermal power 50x platform idle power we’ve heard before.

Aava phone shown on stage.

‘We’re on track’ for smartphones.

Tablet PCs now being highlighted.

Exopc, CIUS, WeTab etc.

Oaktrail for tablets – Looks like a Streak!

Doug talks a lot about Windows 7

2 devices running Oaktrail shown.

Both running windows 7

Dell turns up on stage with new tablet.

10” Dual-core Windows 7. “Most powerful 10” tablet”

OK. Everyone got a bit excited there. Full Dell 10” tablet image set here.

http://www.umpcportal.com/2010/09/first-pics-dell-10-dual-core-win7-convertible/

Now we’re looking at embedded platforms and applications. Intel announced Tunnel Creek as the new E-series Atom range.

More information on that here.

We’re winding down here. ‘Whats next’ says Doug.

Stellarton sneak peek. FPGA on-die with Atom CPU for major flexibility.

That’s it. Thanks for watching.

Looking forward to some hands-on with the Dell Tablet if possible.

If you’re in the Berlin area for IFA and you want to learn more about Intel’s Atom platform, MeeGo operating system, Atom Developer Program and AppUp app-store, this one is for you.

On the 3rd Sept there will be a tweetup that is sponsored by Intel and will be attended by a number of people presenting on the main event on Saturday the 4th.  On the 4th you can attend a training day which includes key people from the Intel software groups and a lot of information. Sascha (netbooknews) and myself will be there and we’ll be available to chat independently about Intel hardware and software.

There’s a very good chance to win some swag too and I’m not talking about pens and USB sticks. There are three netbooks and a WeTab up for grabs!

Tweetup Details:

Sept 3rd

Starts at 19.00h at St. Oberholz, Rosenthaler Str. 72, (Tel. +49 30 24085586)

U Bahn Station: Rosenthaler Platz, U8;

http://www.qype.com/place/492-Sankt-Oberholz-Berlin

Main Event Details:

Sept 4th (Sat)

Event Webpage:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=144065815611069&ref=mf
Address: HomeBase Lounge
Köthener Strasse 44
10963 Berlin
Tel: +49 30 257 938 56
U-Bahn/S-Bahn Station: Potsdamer Platz

Agenda:
10.00 – 12.00h        Intel presenters and bloggers arrive, please
12.30 – 13.00h        Registration and small fingerfood lunch
13.00 – 14.00h       Technical Training Part 1
14.00 – 14.15h        Break
14.15 – 16.15h         Technical Training Part 2

16.30h – 17.00h    Registration (repeat) starts
17.00h – 17.10h    Welcome by Beatrice Frädrich
17.10h – 18.00h    4 presentations – 10min. Each

• Vipul Chopra – Validation
• Jens Weller – apps porting QT
• 4iitoo – application examples with WeTab
• Stefan Englet – AppUP/IADP
• Moderated by Chippy and Sascha

18.00 – 18.30h       Wind-down
20.00            Announcement of raffle winners
18.30 – 22.00h        Buffet dinner/drinks/networking