Winds of change
2010 was set to be the year of the tablet, and to some extent it still is. But a lot of the launches expected for this year have now been put off until early 2011, and there are two main reasons: the iPad and Android.
When numerous OEMs were contemplating their tablet offerings at the start of the year, it was against the backdrop of two major variables: how popular would both the iPad and Android be? By the middle of the year it had become clear that the answer to both was: very.
The reason everyone else was waiting for the answers to these question was that it was by no means certain that there was demand for the tablet form-factor and that the cost of either buying Windows or developing their own Linux variant was viewed as prohibitive. When it became clear that people did want tablets and that ‘free' Android was a success, there was no further reason to hesitate.
Talking to MSI's new country manager - Frank Chen (accompanied by TalkingShop veteran Richard Stewart) - in the latest of our TalkingShop series, we got confirmation that MSI is going to launch both Windows and Android-based tablets in Q1 of next year. While the Windows device will obviously have an Intel chip in it, Chen couldn't reveal what the ARM-based chip powering the Android model will be. The smart money is on Tegra right now.
Other than that, we spoke about the health of the PC component market and had a look at some new MSI products, including a motherboard that can run NVIDIA and AMD graphics in tandem and a gaming notebook.
