Update. We’ve just heard that Intel gave out 5000 Samsung Series 7 Tablets at BUILD. We were right!

Many are predicting that an ARM-based Windows 8 tablet will be shown to developers at the Microsoft BUILD event next week. I’m sure it will. CNET is telling us, however, that there will be an Intel tablet running Windows 8. This could be huge opportunity for Intel but it comes with a huge risk. If either Windows 8 fails to impress or the device is built on hardware that doesn’t seriously outperform an ARM based equivalent, Intel could be left with egg on its face.

In thinking about the existing hardware platforms I’m left a little worried about performance.

Current netbook platforms are too hot and heavy as are the ultra low voltage Core platforms. Oaktrail, Medfield and Moorestown are in the same league as Cortex A9 in terms of processing power so it leaves just one option if Intel really want to make a splash – a tablet-optimized version of Cedar Trail. With low tdp, small die size and the possibility of a dual-core 1.8Ghz version it could be just right for driving an uber-tablet, semi-productive consumer experience.

There is one alternative though – go big!

We’ve seen the Samsung Slate PC over the last week and have been very impressed at its size, weight, amazing speed and processing power. Funnily enough CNET believe the tablet at BUILD will be made by Samsung.

There are two problems with this theory though. Firstly, Intel don’t believe Core processors are best positioned for tablets. Secondly, it’s an expensive device and too expensive to give away to developers as CNET suggest will happen.

If it really does have the Samsung badge on it then perhaps the Samsung TX100 slider is an option. Oaktrail-based with a 1.8Ghz version of the CPU and with all Samsungs best engineering and components along with a dose of Windows 8 optimization for Oaktrail and yes, it might just cut it. The form factor is perfect as a differentiator too. We may even see the first always-on Intel tablet!

http://m.cnet.com/Article.rbml?nid=20104104&cid=null&bcid=&bid=-64

We’re really looking forward to Archos’ new G9 tablets, their inexpensive price and unique features are going make them a welcomed addition to the world of Honeycomb tablets.

As Charbax of ARMdevices.net shows us, the TI OMAP 4460 found in the G9 tablets will run at different speeds depending upon the capacity (and the price) of the tablet that you purchase.

When Archos first announced the Archos 80 G9 and the 101 G9, they were said to eventually be available in 8/16/250GB capacities, while other specs would remain the same. However, at IDF they are now showing that the 8GB variant of both models will run at 1GHz instead of 1.5GHz.

The lower capacity makes sense to bring down the price even further and offer additional choice to customers. What I don’t quite understand is the lower clock speed. As far as I can tell, the 8GB model of the 80 and 101 is still running the same CPU as the 16/250GB models. Feel free to correct me on this, but I can’t think of any additional fee that would be incurred to use a different clock speed on the CPU, so I have to wonder why they are lowering the speed on the 8GB variants.

My best theory is that Archos wants the more expensive models to be the most appealing, and give an additional incentive for going with one of the higher capacity units. If that’s the case, I can’t help but feel like they’re artificially giving users of the 8GB variants the shaft, though I’m hoping there is something less dubious behind it.

Archos confirmed US pricing for the 16GB variants of the 80 and 101 back when they were first announced; $270 and $349 respectively, and we should see the other models officially priced soon. Charbax has the official EU prices for all models here. The G9 80 and 101 will become available at the end of September, according to Archos.

Chippy is on the IDF show floor and we’ll see if he can get this question about the CPU speed answered for us.

Though Sony’s Tablet S has been known about for months now, today they finally unveiled official specifications for the device. While weight isn’t the spec that everyone jumps at immediately, it’s certainly an important factor for a large 10 inch tablet. Sony says that their Tablet S is just 595 grams, which makes it the second lightest of the top 12 tablets, right between the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Apple iPad 2 (with the Tab 10.1 being the lightest) quite impressive considering that the Tablet S design isn’t as thin as many of the other tablets on the market because of it’s interesting folded shape, though it should count itself lucky to be considered a 10″ tablet when the screen is actually only 9.4″. Have a look at how the top 12 ten inch-category tablets compare:

I would love to be able to say that tablets are getting lighter as time goes on, but as you can see, there are four Honeycomb tablets that were released after the first (the Xoom) that are actually heavier (though the Eee Pad Slider sort of has an excuse!).

The Tablet S is only about 1% lighter than the iPad 2, but Sony designed it with that funky shape specifically to make it feel lighter in one hand by grouping the weight on one side and reducing leverage again your hand. I’d be curious to see how much torque the iPad 2 puts on a hand vs. the Tablet S.

Though Sony’s Tablet S has been known about for months now, today they finally unveiled official specifications for the device. While weight isn’t the spec that everyone jumps at immediately, it’s certainly an important factor for a large 10” tablet. Sony says that their Tablet S is just 595 grams, which makes it the second lightest of the top 12 tablets, right between the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Apple iPad 2 (with the Tab 10.1 being the lightest) – quite impressive considering that the Tablet S design isn’t as thin as many of the other tablets on the market because of it’s interesting folded shape, though it should count itself lucky to be considered a 10″ tablet when the screen is actually only 9.4″. Have a look at how the top 12 ten inch-category tablets compare:

I would love to be able to say that tablets are getting lighter as time goes on, but as you can see, there are four Honeycomb tablets that were released after the first (the Xoom) that are actually heavier (though the Eee Pad Slider sort of has an excuse!).

The Tablet S is only about 1% lighter than the iPad 2, but Sony designed it with that funky shape specifically to make it feel lighter in one hand by grouping the weight on one side and reducing leverage again your hand. I’d be curious to see how much torque the iPad 2 puts on a hand vs. the Tablet S.

‘Proving that it’s not who makes it first but who makes it better’

Kazuo Hirai announced two tablets at their IFA press conference today. We were at the announcement and watched the presentation.

Availability IN Europe should later this month and the prices were announced as follows.

Tablet S €479 (9.4″ Tablet)

Tablet P €599 (Dual screen)

‘Tablets that fit in the hand and in the pocket’

Offering Sony Playstation compatibility, film and music stores this is something quite unique, especially for Europe. The prices are obviously set to be competitive and to bring as many people.into those stores as possible.

[ Posted via the Galaxy Tab. Ultra-Mobile at IFA 2011. For more IFA coverage, follow me on Twitter. @Chippy ]

Update: There’s been an important new development to this story. See here.

Tomorrow (September 1st) the AndyPad and AndyPad Pro, new low-cost entries into the Android tablet world, are launching. The devices are already attractive thanks to their low price and now they’ve become a much more serious contender thanks to official Android Market access, a fact which Verticool (the company behind the AndyPad) has shared exclusively with Carrypad.

The AndyPad will run you €129 ($186 USD) and feature a 7 inch resistive touchscreen @ 800×480, a front camera, 8GB of storage, and Android 2.3. Full specs here.

The AndyPad Pro gives you a more modern tablet experience with a 7 inch capacitive touchscreen @ 1024×600, front and rear cameras, 16GB of storage, bluetooth, and Android 2.3 as well for €179 ($258). Full specs here.

Both devices are WiFi-only and have a 1.2GHz Cortex A8 CPU which Verticool says will 1080p output through HDMI.

The inclusion of official Android Market access means that users of the AndyPad and AndyPad Pro will be able to use many of the great Google applications that make Android… well… Android. Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and more should all make an appearance on the device. You’ll also be able to download apps from the Market as you see fit so you’ll be able to get your fill of Angry Birds, or any of the other 250,000+ available applications.

At IFA next week. Kupa will be showing the Kupa X11, a 10″ Oaktrail (1.5Ghz Atom) based tablet that is said to offer 10 hours of battery life.

Always suspicious of battery life claims, I checked out the specs and after seeing the huge 54Wh battery am fairly confident that it could indeed reach 10 hours of light usage. The battery doesn’t bring major weight issues either as the product is coming in under 1kg.

Pressure sensitive digitized and 10-point capacitive multi-touch brings the best of pen and touch input options. There’s a hi-res 1366×768 screen and 2GB Ram driven by Windows 7 Pro.

The basic model with 64GB SSD is going to retail for $699 which isn’t bad given the hi-end screen and battery. Adding 3G, GMS and storage up to 128GB takes the price to $999

We’ll keep an eye out for the Kupa X11 at IFA.

http://www.kupaworld.com/en/product/kupaX11

[ Posted via the Galaxy Tab. Ultra-Mobile at IFA 2011. For more IFA coverage, follow me on Twitter. @Chippy ]

This is the seventh report on sizing trends in PCs below 12 inch screen size (and above 5 inch) appearing in the German market through the popular price comparison engine, Geizhals.at (*1) The last one was done in Feb 2011. Once again we’ve seen a big jump in overall numbers. The 7″ segment and 10″ segment have grown while the 11″ segment has shrunk. The 10″ market dominates more in this report than it did in the report of Feb 2011 although there is a clear trend occurring in the 7″ space where growth in products has occurred in all of the last 4 reports.

Number of SKUs in the market

The number of choices in the mobile screen space (above smartphones) has grown over 2x from approx 240 SKUs to over 630 SKUs.

Screen size distribution

The big jump in numbers is clear to see from the top graph. Total numbers jumped by 115 with most of that growth coming from the tablet form factor and the 10″ netbook/notebook sector. Big increases in the 7″ tablet sector (now the biggest number so far) and a reduction in the numbers of 11″ devices mean that  percentage distribution has changed a lot. The iPad2 introduction caused the growth in the 9″ segment.

In the 10″ netbook space which accounts for 75% of the 10″ category there are now 18 AMD C-Series SKUs and 315 Atom SKUs. 64 of the Atom-based devices (20%) use the high-end N570 version.

In interesting statistic is that 1 in 5 devices on the market in the 5-11″ segment are from ASUS.

Across all categories, ARM-based CPU designs account for  23% of all devices, almost exclusively in the tablet sector. It will be interesting to see how that changes over the next 2 years with the introduction of Windows for the ARM processor.

In terms of weight, the tablets mean that the average weight of a device has gone down.  28% of the devices weigh under 1KG.

Meego appears for the first time along with the cheapest and lightest netbook ever launched. The ASUS Eee PC X101.

Chromebooks did not enter the sub 12″ screen space yet. (Acer 700 not available in Germany)

Sandy Bridge (2nd Generation Intel Core CPUs) enters the sector with 14 SKUs from 5 devices.

Total number of tablet form-factor devices:  193 (30% of total)

Cheapest devices:

• X86/Windows Laptop Eee PCR101D at 199 Euros. (Was: Samsung N145 at 228 Euro)
• Non-Windows Laptop (X86-CPU) –  Eee PC X101 (Meego) at 169 Euros
• ARM Tablet Debitel One Pad  (Android 1.5) at 59 Euro
• X86/Windows Tablet Archos 9 at 370 Euros (was 402 Euros)

In terms of netbook trends, the search and news volumes seem to be steady after their large drop in Q1 (see Google Trends.) Numbers of devices in the market have increased and obviously the introduction of Cedar Trail in Q4 will create news, products and searches in the netbook category. The trend for netbook products, news and search is going to be level-to-rising for Q4 That may, or may not, relate to sales numbers.

In terms of handheld PCs, our focus here at UMPCPortal, it’s a sad story. The online market is now almost totally clear of 5-9″ X86-based Windows devices. It will be interesting to see how the Windows 8 market affects this in 2012.

Warning: Please remember that this is a single data-source analysis of what is happenning today, in the German market. This is not a complete market analysis report. You may use the data and images but please also reference this article which includes this warning.

*1 Based on SKUs, not model families. Data taken from Geizhals  An English language (and UK market) version of Geizhals is available at Skinflint.