Rockchip Electronics Co., a Chinese company that makes processors for a variety of markets is now focused on the tablet and smartphone market is hoping to create the same type of tablet buying frenzy that accompanied Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad when its price was slashed and that Amazon is now garnering with its Kindle Fire, but industry wide.
It sees its technology the RK2918 chip that is based on ARM’s processor cores, as the solution to the development and adoption of low cost full featured tablets that are priced in the $100 range, significantly lower that Apple’s immensely popular iPads and the Amazon’s top of the line Kindles.
The company is displaying over 40 prototypes based on its technology at the CES show this week and will even have version that will be running Adobe’s Flash 11.0 technology, which is not standard in the emerging Android standard.
It said that it sees the advent of its low cost chips with the emerging Android 4.0 operating system, code named Ice Cream Sandwich, as the key issues in driving the new sales. (Free Ice Cream Sandwiches are available at the booth at CES)
The company believes that it can succeed in both the 7-inch and 10-inch tablet space and that products will range from $100 to $250. This all comes as some are calling Android tablets a failure. This seems like a bit of overkill but they certainly have not lived up to expectations, for the most part.
There were a few nice products that hung around but they did not light the world on fire as some had expected. This is really to be expected as many companies put their toe in the water with their first generation tablets and hopefully are using it as a learning experience.
Look at Amazon’s Kindle Fire, selling a million or more units a week during the holidays and Amazon’s best selling product for more than three months running. The Kindle Fire showed how accepted a tablet can be when it has the right features and the right price point.Price is important in this space, but more so is the entire environment, and many hope that Android 4.0 helps deliver a better experience for customers.
Rockchip faces a range of challenges. If the Kindle Fire breakdown shows that it cost over $200 to build, where will all of the savings come from? Also it is not alone in developing chips for the Android market that are based on ARM technology. Nvidia, Qualcomm and others have chips on the market or at least a license from ARM to build them. Intel is still touting its Atom technology for this space and is gearing up for a renewed push. Apple of course is going its own way on chips, using its own processors.
Also for experienced visitors to CES and to older, now defunct shows such as Comdex, there always seemed to be a huge number of low cost options for popular products ranging from MP3 players to PCs, and yet few of them managed to hang on. However Rockchip is already established as a technology provider in other market segments so it is not gambling all on this effort.
It would be great to see tablets become low cost items because this will help greatly expand the market for them as an alternative to notebooks as companies will be much more willing to invest in them if the upfront and replacement costs are not prohibitive.
