Hardware

ASUS is a well-known Taiwanese computer components manufacturer. The company stepped into the tablet industry a couple of years ago. The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer is the company's latest Honeycomb tablet with a unique form factor. This tablet comes with a keyboard (purchased separately), which transforms it into a mini laptop or netbook when docked to the tablet. The tablet hasn't seen the wider market yet, with countries like India still awaiting the launch of the tablet. Now it seems like the company is already planning a successor to the tablet powered by the NVIDIA Tegra 3 CPU, and apparently running Android Ice Cream Sandwich. The tablet could be launched in October or November this year. Previous rumours suggested that ASUS was planning to have a successor to the Eee Pad Transformer running on the Windows 8 platform, but this new rumour seems more likely. Also, the fact that this news comes from a supplier chain of ASUS in Taiwan, makes it seem much more plausible.

The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer is a regular Honeycomb tablet with a 10.1" display. It stands out in the crowd of tablets because it comes with a keyboard (which can be bought separately), literally transforming it into a netbook. A similar feature is available with the Motorola XOOM, allowing it to be paired with a Bluetooth wireless keyboard. The Acer Iconia Tab is already available in India, and with the XOOM, Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Eee Pad Transformer launching soon, the tablet market in India could heat up in no time.

The Eee Pad Transformer runs on a 1 GHz dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 CPU, which is seen in most Honeycomb tablets. The Tegra 3 processor codenamed Kal El is a quad core CPU capable of running each core at up to 1.5 GHz. The Kal El is said to be up to 5 times faster than the Tegra 2 processor, so we can only imagine the snappiness of that beast.

Via asymco

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The iTunes store continues to grow. The data that Apple published in the last event included the following:

• 15 Billion iTunes song downloads
• 130 million book downloads
• 14 billion app downloads
• $2.5 billion paid to developers
• 225 million accounts
• 425k apps
• 90k iPad apps
• 100k game and entertainment titles
• 50 million game center accounts

As this data is added to the existing data and cross-referenced additional insight into the economics of iTunes is emerging.

Since we know something about the average price of songs and apps, and we know the split between developers and Apple (and roughly between music labels and Apple) we can get a rough estimate of the amount Apple retains to run its store.

The following chart shows iTunes “content margin” by month. This margin is what Apple “keeps” after paying content owners but before paying for other costs like payment processing and delivery/fulfillment which should be accounted as variable costs. Strictly speaking this margin is not “gross margin”.

If we add the content margins from music and apps and assume the store runs at break even we can get an idea of what it costs to operate the store.  The latest number is $113 million per month (from a total income of $313 million/mo.). It implies over $1.3 billion per year.

Much of that cost does go into serving the content (traffic and payment processing). Some of it goes to curation and support. But it’s very likely that there is much left over to be invested in capacity increases.

Via ubergizmo

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NXP has just announced its GreenChip, which gives every light bulb the potential of being connected to a TCP/IP network to provide real-time information and receive commands, wirelessly. This feels a bit like science-fiction talk, but NXP has managed to build a chip that is low-cost enough to be embedded into regular light bulbs (and more in the future) with an increase of about $1 in manufacturing cost. Obviously, $1 is not small relative to the price of a bulb but, in absolute terms, it’s not bad at all — and the cost is bound to fall steadily, thanks to Moore’s law.

But what can you do with wirelessly connected bulbs? For one, you can dim, or turn them on and off using digital commands from any computer, phone or tablet.

You can also do it remotely: those chips have the potential of making home automation much easier and more standard than anything that came before. Better home automation can also mean smarter (and automated) energy -and money- savings. the bulbs are also smart enough to know how much energy they have consumed.

Although the bulbs use internet addresses, they are not connected directly to the web. They don’t use WIFI either, because that protocol is too expensive and not energy-efficient for this usage. Instead, the bulbs are linked through a 2.4-GHz IEEE 802.15.4 network and in standby mode, the GreenChip consumes about 50mW.

The network itself is a mesh network that is connected to a “box” that will itself be connected to your home network. Computers and mobile devices send commands to the box, which sends them to the bulbs. Because it is a mesh network, every bulb is considered to be a “network extender”, so as long as there is 30 meters between two bulbs, the network can be extended across very large surfaces. In a typical house, that would mean no “dead spots”.

The first products will be manufactured by TCP, which manufactures about 1M efficient light bulbs (of all sorts) per day. TCP supplies other brands like Philips or GE. The prices of the final products have yet to be determined, but NXP expect them to be attractive to consumers. Of course, we need to see what the applications will look like too.

This is an interesting first step in embedding low-cost smart chips in low-cost goods. Yet, this is a critical step in creating a smarter local energy grid in our homes.

Via SlashGear

During today’s opening keynote for Google I/O, they touched on all the major topics that folks were anticipating including Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Google Music, and Google TV, but they also added some unexpected developments. One of them being their new Android Open Accessory initiative, that will allow developers to create their own hardware accessories that can be controlled by Android.

The Android Open Accessory system is built on open-source Arduino. It will will allow externally accessories connect to an Android-powered device via USB and eventually Bluetooth. This could essentially mean the start of a whole slew of “Made for Android” devices such as docks, speakers, or even an exercise bike. This opens up a whole world of possibilities now for external accessories to work with Android.

Google is offering an Android Device Kit or ADK for developers. The kit comes with a sample implementation in the form of a USB accessory along with all the hardware design files, the code for the accessory’s firmware, and the Android application that interacts with the accessory. 

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Android Open Accessory Development Kit