VIA's profits in June double from previous month due to tablet sales

While the PC market is feeling the pinch, tablet sales are booming and many component manufacturers are feeling the love, VIA included. A 199.75 percent month-on-month and 168.61 percent year-on-year sales boost for June 2013 has been attributed to sales of tablets to mainland China.

"Industry commentators stated that the popularity of tablets in China is expected to continue expanding. They also expect VIA's performance to exceed its current figures in the third quarter as demand drives up the average selling price for the company's components offerings." - ChinaPost.com.tw

VIA WonderMedia bold idea taking root

It was several years ago that VIA WonderMedia first started to target the sub-$100 tablet PC mark. Back then the controversial thing was that the tablets were 7-inch, much smaller than the standard set by Apple with the iPad first gen. at 10 inches. Now the controversial focus is on just how productive you can be with a cheap but well featured sub-$100 tablet. Interestingly, it's the operating system that makes the tablet super-useful, even when the hardware specs are no where near top end models.

"The good news is that Ice Cream Sandwich lets you do a number of neat things, from pulling up notifications (showing battery life, network and emails) from the bottom right of the screen to pinning widgets to the home screen." - Source.

VIA spreading tablets to education market in India

VIA and Wishtell get a mention in an upbeat article about the proliferation of tablets in the education sector. The VIA based tablets were recently launched in India, catering to 23 different regional languages.

"Our tablets will enable students to access virtual labs for physics, chemistry and so on. A student can also subscribe to our special packages, such as astronomy content, which may not be available in the school curriculum," says Milind Shah, CEO of Wishtel India. - Source.

VIA and Wishtel bring out new tablets in India

Two new Wishtel tablets, featuring VIA chips, are the first in the world to natively support Indian languages giving them an advantage for adoption into the education market in India.

“With the introduction of the IRA and IRA Thing, Wishtel is leading the way in driving tablet innovation in India,” commented Richard Brown, VP International Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. “The potential for these devices is breathtaking, particularly in areas such as education.”

Source.

VIA Wondermedia "home" tablet

Engadget spotted something a little different in the tablet space on the VIA booth. There were half a dozen tablets all lined up in a row on the Wondermedia section of the VIA booth, and one of them featured an interface on top of Android 1.6 that gives it a "home" tablet sort of look, like something you might use on the kitchen bench to keep an eye on the time, weather, etc ... with quick links into the music and video folders as well. Quite a cool idea!

Android to help VIA (and others) into tablet market

The Epoch Times is citing a report called 'Impact of Connected Tablets on the CE Market – 2010 Interim Report', which suggests that tablets using the Android operating system could hold almost 30% market share by the end 2015. I actually think that this prediction is quite low. If you're really going to count the worldwide market share then you have to count the huge number of Android tablets that are already being pumped out in China. These models are often inspired by the iPad design, but with smaller 7-inch screens and of course sporting the free Android operating system. I've seen quite a number of them sporting VIA Wondermedia chips.

Looking for a VIA tablet for Christmas? Found a great one!

It is really hard to tell sometimes what hardware is powering the Android tablets that you find for sale on eBay. They all look very similar and unfortunately, the sellers rarely list the actual hardware specs when it comes to processor and integrated graphics. They focus instead on what you can do with the device. That's a fair enough sales tactic. Here's one that I do know has a VIA VT8505 ARM926 400MHz processor, the 7" iRobot or APad.

This is one of the most robust VIA tablet models that's quite easy to buy if you're in Australia, and because it supports the latest Android firmware, it has the most uses, like full support for YouTube and Skype. It also has Open Office installed. The information about what the tablet can and cannot do, and the hardware it has, is just about the most clear that I have come across on eBay.

They even have a few rods to say about VIA: "We have been selling APad since it was new in the market on July. We are selling the unit with VIA 400Mhz CPU 256MB Ram. We choose VIA rather than Rockchip as we know VIA is more reliable than Rockchip under our testing."

The price is also really fantastic at $129.99 including postage. With delivery in 3-5 business days, it's not too late to get this in time for Christmas!

Yep, I changed the name

When I first set up this blog I aimed to track VIA netbooks and their availability in Australia. But as time has gone on I've found that it's more common to find a new VIA-based tablet hitting the shelves ... usually the virtual shelves of eBay for Australian consumers ... than for a new VIA-based netbook to be announced. So I figured it was high time I adapt the blog and start following tablets as well, hence the name changed to VIA Netbook & Tablet News.