China decided that it cannot simply let American brands like Apple and Amazon dominate the tablet industries, so it is pushing prices of tablet PC down to below $100, consumers may be delighted to know that this may trigger a price war in the market.
Amazon shakes up the tablet market since the debut of its $199 Taiwanese-made Kindle Fire tablet in November, successfully grabbing market share away from rival iPad. But here comes another shocking price-breaking tablet; Amazon Kindle Fire runs on Android 3.2, MIPS Technologies and Ingenic Semiconductor.
This tablet runs on Android 4.0, MIPS Technologies and Ingenic Semiconductor - but even cheaper.
China’s Ainol Electronics, established in 2004 and has been continuously winning tech awards since 2006, today released the Ainovo Novo7, the first Android 4.0-powered tablet. The product is to be marketed through its Hong Kong-based subsidiary Ainovo.
The tablet has a 7-inch multi-touch capacitive touchscreen (with the company announcing the 8 and 9-inches version would be out soon), and is powered by Ingenic’s JZ4770 mobile applications processor, which leverages a MIPS-Based XBurst CPU running at 1GHz.
It has a VGA front-facing as well as 2-megapixel rear-facing cameras, support exFAT storage format (over 4GB capacity), features ports for USB 2.0, HDMI 1.3 and microSD and is Wi-Fi capable (also supports external 3G). The device also supports 3D graphics and is capable of 1080p 10bit HD video decoding so that the user can see videos in all formats.
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The new Ainovo Novo7 tablet
MIPS says that battery life and graphics performance are up to standard, Novo7 is capable of running multimedia application and the battery has enough juice to keep the device rolling for up to 6 hours (gaming), up to 25 hours (music), up to 8 hours (video) and up to 7 hours (web-browsing).
Novo7 is also a sheer delight for gamers, its manufacturers claim: “Using Vivant GC860 GPU graphics core, support for OpenGL ES2.0 and ES 1.0, OpenVG1.1 and operating frequency 444Mhz, games run smoother and they’re more realistic.”
Google’s senior vice president of mobile division, Andy Rubin, has lauded the device. I’m thrilled to see the entrance of MIPS-Based Android 4.0 tablets into the market. Low-cost, high-performance tablets are a big win for mobile consumers and a strong illustration of how Androids openness drives innovation and competition for the benefit of consumers around the world. Rubin said in a statement.
The new tablet has passed the Google Compatibility Test Suite certification, and is ready to run Google’s services as well as the thousands of apps on Android Market
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$99
Android tablets have struggled to compete with the iPad in the high-end market, so perhaps Google sees a chance to go after the lower end of the market. That strategy proved successful with smartphones, where it has been gobbling up a huge chunk of the market and outselling the iPhone.
Sandeep Vij, president and CEO of MIPS Technologies, said in a statement that The openness of Android is enabling a new level of connectedness and interaction between devices and between people across the globe. We are excited to be a part of the Android ecosystem delivering on that vision.
He added, We applaud Ingenics accomplishment in developing this new high-performance, feature-rich Android 4.0 tablet, and offering it at a price point that makes it widely accessible. We look forward to teaming with Ingenic as it continues to develop MIPS-Based mobile innovations.
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Tablet market is currently dominated by ARM processors, and MIPS intends to change that.
For MIPS, the Novo7 could represent an aggressive push into the tablet market currently dominated by ARM processors. Earlier, the company said it planned to have an Ice Cream Sandwich demo available within weeks of the release of the source code, with a model in production within 90 days. It successfully integrated them into Novo7 in just 20 days instead of months.