Intel is open to bringing Microsoft's Windows Phone Operating System (OS) to smartphones based on its x86 chips, but only if it is commercially viable.
Windows Phone's share of the smartphone market is underwhelming at the moment, but the OS is worth watching, said Hermann Eul, President of Intel's Mobile Communications Group, during an interview with the IDG News Service at the Computex 2012 trade show in Taiwan. Intel will consider putting Windows Phone OS on x86 depending on how the OS does in the market in the future.
"We would be [interested] when we see that this market has a good chance to return our money that we have invested into this," Eul said. "Our roadmap has devices that can support Windows also on phones. So we can do that. The hooks for doing that [are] there."
Intel is just getting started in the smartphone market.
After we have seen Tizen Operating System (OS) in action on a Samsung slate a few days ago, today we are bringing fresh news about this fresh platform.
As you probably know, Intel, Linux Foundation, Samsung, US network operator Sprint and many other big names of the telecom industry are involved in the Tizen Project.
Well, it seems that HTC are interested, too, and rumor has it that the Taiwan-based company will launch a Tizen-powered smartphone in the second half of the year, while Samsung will also unveil some smartphones running on the open source Operating System over the same time frame.
Wind River has announced a new software package for building Android-based automotive computing systems.
The framework consists of several components, including a custom home screen interface that is tailored for cars, an FM radio control implementation, and support for interacting with docked Apple's iOS devices.
The new package is part of Wind River’s Android "solution accelerator" lineup. Wind River is an embedded systems company that is owned by Intel.
Did you know that it's now possible to run Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on your Nokia N9?
It's true. While the N9 and the Lumia 800 use the same amazing Nokia hardware, neither of those runs Android.
Nokia made a decision long ago to use MeeGo on their last great in-house smartphone (the N9), while shifting to Microsoft's Windows Phone shortly after on the Lumia 800.
But what if you want Nokia hardware with Google software? Tough luck, right? Wrong.
There's now a way to dual-boot your N9, with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich being the secondary Operating System (OS).
They're very much bedfellows with Microsoft since diving head-first into production of Windows Phone 7 smartphones, and now Nokia look to be readying a Windows 8 tablet by the end of the year too.
According to DigiTimes, Nokia will be putting Microsoft's touch-focussed Operating System (OS) through its paces in a slate set to ship "in the fourth quarter of 2012" with 200,000 units built by the Compal Electronics manufacturers ready to ship at launch.
Packing a Qualcomm "dual-core platform" (most likely an S4 chipset), Nokia have long been entertaining the idea of producing a tablet unique from the bevvy in stores already. Just last year for instance they were thought to be experimenting with a MeeGo slate.
Samsung said it is working on merging its homegrown “bada” smartphone Operating System (OS) with Tizen, an Operating System project the company is conducting with chipmaker Intel.
“We have an effort that will merge bada and Tizen,” said Tae-Jin Kang, Senior Vice-president of Samsung’s Contents Planning Team in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Kang said he didn’t know when the work would be complete but that it was already underway.
When the integration is finished, Tizen will support mobile applications written with bada’s SDK (software development kit). That support will include backwards compatibility for previously published bada apps.
The full sourcecode for Symbian^3 has been released, unofficially, together with the bootloader for Nokia devices running the Operating System (OS), opening the door to other platforms being installed on the company’s phones.
The source, shared at DailyMobile, means that enterprising hackers could eventually install Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 or other platforms onto Nokia hardware.
Unfortunately, that sort of mod is going to take more than just access to the bootloader information.
PC builders Acer and Lenovo are rumored to be planning tablets running Microsoft's Windows 8 on Intel's x86 "Clover Trail" system-on-chip (SoC) silicon for appearance as early as June or July 2012, according to a media report.
The new tablets are scheduled to appear in the "third quarter of 2012" according to a Monday DigiTimes story, which cited unnamed sources in the "upstream supply chain" for the rumor.
The timing, if true, appears to be close to expectations for Windows 8's release. Microsoft hasn't disclosed a final release date yet for Windows 8, but a beta will appear in late February.
According to reports, MIT's Technology Review got to go hands on with a brand new prototype smartphone running Intel’s latest mobile processor, Medfield.
The Google's Android handset running Gingerbread has similar dimensions to the Apple's iPhone 4 but was noticeably lighter, this is likely because for a prototype, its case might be made out of plastic, and not glass plus plastic reinforced with metal frames and elements usually found in real consumer phones.
Intel's Medfield chips were shown in Nokia devices that were supposed to run MeeGoback in February. At that time, some specs were leaked for the chip.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Chief Executive Meg Whitman said Friday that the company plans to manufacture a webOS tablet in 2013, even as the company winds down the webOS-based TouchPad tablet.
In what is the latest bizarre turn for HP's webOSand related tablet business, Whitman and board member Marc Andreessen stated that the company would manufacture a webOS tablet perhaps in 2012, and definitely in 2013.
An HP spokesman, asked to confirm the report, said that a webOS tablet would be made only if the market was "viable".
He added that he preferred to focus on the decision to release webOS as open source, which will give it an immortality that it otherwise might not have.
Intel and MIPS Technologies expect the next version of Google's mobile Operating System, Android 4.0 (codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich), to soon run on tablets and smartphones based on their processors.
Android 4.0 has already been shown to work on a smartphone with an ARM processor, which is used in most smartphones and tablets today. Google showed Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) last month running on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, which will go on sale this month in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Nokia Lumia 800, the company’s flagship Windows Phone device, has been officially launched at the Nokia World 2011 conference in London, UK, today.
However, we had a chance to spend a little bit of time with the Lumia 800 prior to the launch. Not enough time to write a review – we can’t speak to the call quality or battery life – but we can say that it felt great in hand, had a gorgeous screen and a truly winning form factor.
If any company matches Apple when it comes to industrial design for their mobile phones, it’s Nokia. Nokia might not have the same panache or flair for crafting beautiful looking devices, but the company certainly thinks about every little detail.
Nokia is getting ready to launch its first smartphones based on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Operating System (OS).
It is most likely that the company will show the handset at its Nokia World event in late October and will start selling it towards the end of the year.
The company has already started to prepare ads for its Nokia 800.
Keeping in mind that the first Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is generally a rush project at Nokia, which only made decision to adopt Windows Phone as its primary Operating System for smartphones earlier this year, the information that is circulating about it is not completely clear in many ways, but it is widely believed that it shares a lot of technologies with the Meego-based N9 flagship, but fully complies with system and minimum equipment list imposed by Microsoft for Windows Phone.
Nokia, the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, is developing a Linux-based mobile OS that will power its low-cost smartphones as it bids to sell a billion of such under-US$100 (€75) device.
The Nokia OS project called "Meltemi" and led by Executive Vice-president Mary McDowell, was revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
An Emailed statement from a Nokia spokesman described the plan as part of exciting projects of the Nokia Mobile Phones team."
The "next billion" Nokia low-end handsets will be made touch-capable and app-enabled through Meltemi, according to Thenextweb.com.
Nokia, having abandoned its ambition to develop a high-end Operating System (OS), is shifting its programming efforts toward creating software for its low-end phones, according to people familiar with the matter.
The project is a Linux-based Operating System code-named Meltemi, the Greek word for dry summer winds that blow across the Aegean Sea from the north. It is being led by Mary McDowell, the handset maker's Executive Vice-president in charge of mobile phones, these people say.
A spokesman for Nokia, Doug Dawson, declined to comment on the Finland-based company's future products or technologies.
Intel has decided to support Tizen, another open source platform, and dropped MeeGo, its mobile open source Operating System (OS) baby.
Partner this latest news with Intel’s ambiguous support of Google's Android, the question begs to be asked: What is Intel’s intention?
Here’s the breakdown on Intel’s lack of mobile monogamy and the details on just what Tizen means for you in the channel …
Intel has officially joined the Linux Foundation and the LiMo Foundation, both open source organizations set up to profess, populate and proliferate mobile Linux alternatives into the marketplace.
Intel hauled out its first Google's Android tablet running on "Medfield," an upcoming Atom chip for smartphones and tablets, while two executives also chatted about their relationship with Google at the company's developer conference yesterday.
The Medfield Atom chip is one of Intel's most power-efficient chip designs; a strict requirement for tablets and smartphones.
It contains a single processing core - as opposed to more power-hungry dual-core Atom chips used in netbooks - and will be available in devices in the first half of 2012.
The tablet that Intel showed today is a so-called reference design that the company will supply to tablet makers that would use it as a template for their own product.
In fact, Samsung says it couldn't even if it wanted to.
"Meego is an open-source project which cannot be a target of acquisition," Samsung representative James Chung said yetserday.
The response dashed hopes that MeeGo might be saved through an acquisition, which was spurred earlier this week by a Mobiledia report that Samsung was interested in a deal.
Many had expected Samsung and other handset manufacturers to look toward acquiring their own mobile Operating System (OS), which would allow them to reduce their dependence on Google's Android platform.
Samsung Electronics may be considering a potential purchase of the increasingly defunct smartphone Operating System (OS) Meego as its own proprietary platform.
That's according to a report today from Mobiledia, which cites industry sources.
A Samsung representative wasn't immediately available to comment.
The platform chatter highlights the increasing dilemma that Google's Android handset manufacturers face now that Google is to buy Motorola Mobility and makes its own smartphones.
With lackluster interest in its MeeGo mobile platform from carriers and manufacturers, and the need to focus its resources on more profitable areas, Intel announced that MeeGo development is being "temporarily" halted.
But in the mobile device space, that is the death knell for a platform. If there was little interest when Intel was actively developing it, there will surely be even less now.
MeeGo was a joint venture launched in early 2010 between Nokia and Intel.
Nokia knew Symbian was at the end of its useful life and was switching to a Maemo, a Linux based platform designed originally for tablets. Intel wanted to get in the mobile platform game as well and jumped in with Moblin, which is short for Mobile Linux.
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