7-inch tablets to drop to $40

VIA led the way some years ago with pushing for the sub-$100 mark for 7-inch tablets. VIA's WonderMedia offers single chip solutions that have made low price points a reality for whitebox manufacturers. Digitimes now reports that such models will drop to as low as $40 by the third quarter this year.

"The market for 7-inch tablets is seeing intense competition and white-box vendors are expected to further reduce prices for entry-level models to US$40 in the second half of 2013, according to Taiwan-based supply chain sources."

Tests show solid performance of new WonderMedia dual core SoC

The new WonderMedia WM8880 tested in an unbranded 7-inch tablet shows a mid-range but solid performance in this screenshot:

http://www.decryptedtech.com/news/via-for-cheap-tablets-and-smartphones

New dual core WonderMedia chip surfaces before official launch

WonderMedia has a new dual core ARM processor coming out and its destined for low-cost smartphones and tablet, probably mainly in the Chinese market and possibly in developing countries as well. The reason is that, if unofficial testing is accurate, its performance is about 1/2 that of the top of the line offerings from Qualcomm, Samsung, NVIDIA and the like. But the trade off is the cost of course and there's no shortage of demand for affordable tablets.

"VIA hasn’t added any information about the new chip to its website yet, but the folks at Chinese site 1pad have posted some details and test results from a 7 inch tablet powered by the WM8880 processor. The new processor appears to be very similar to the WM8850 chip which launched last year, but the WM8880 features dual-core graphics while last year’s chip had a single-core Mali 400 GPU." - Source:  Liliputing.com

Does this $100 tablet have VIA WonderMedia inside?

I can't be sure but it's a good bet that this tablet by the well-known brand of Polaroid, is driven by a VIA WonderMedia ARM9 processor and complimentary graphics chip. I make this guess based on the fact that VIA's WonderMedia solution brings to the table the specs and prices mentioned in the ad.

This is an entry-level Android tablet with an entry-level price, available at the discount store in the US, Big Lots.

WonderMedia announces new tablet platforms for 7" and 10.1"

With the tablet wars hotting up, not only with variety but price competition, WonderMedia has put together new platforms that boast ergonomic design, front and rear cameras and up to a 1.4Ghz WM8980 ARM Cortex- A9 Dual-Core processor combined with the ARM Mali-400 Dual-Processor GPU.

10.1” and 7” Turnkey Tablet Solution Highlights:

• World class ergonomic design
• Up to a 1.4Ghz WM8980 ARM Cortex- A9 Dual-Core processor
• ARM Mali-400 Dual-Processor GPU
• Supports up to 2GB DDR3 RAM and 16GB NAND Flash
• Thin design of only 4.5mm on top edge and 3mm on side edge
• Ultra-lightweight, only 650g for 10.1” and 370g for 7” designs
• Support for up to 8M rear camera and 2M front camera
• High compatibility with WiFi and 3G Cellular Networks
• Expansive I/O including one Mini HDMI port, one Micro SD port (up to 32GB), 1 USB and Micro-USB OTG port, and one 3.5mm stereo headphone jack
• Up to 8000MAH battery for 10.1” and up to 3400MAH battery for 7” designs
• Simple and efficient manufacturing and assembly process for easier production
• Advanced hardware security engine
• Android 4.2 available

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.

Asus Memo Pad, with VIA WonderMedia, released in India

Around $170 Australian, or 9999 rupee in India, will get you this light-weight tablet from Asus, available in a range of snazzy colors.

The specs are pretty standard for the price point. Considering how well Amazon apps work on Android tablets, this is a great multi-purpose device that is a nice size for an ereader and tablet.

That $99 tablet rumour is back

Google and VIA's WonderMedia are at the centre of a rumour about a new $99 tablet that has attracted the attention of tech media the world over.

"The Google rumor is fairly specific, even if it hasn't proven to be true – DigiTimes claimed the new device would launch in late 2012. The search giant supposedly joined forces with Asian manufacturers WonderMedia, HannStar and Quanta, DigiTime said, to bring the tablet to market."

This isn't the first time that "WonderMedia" and "$99 tablet" have been seen together in the one sentence. Actually when the rumours first came out the favoured term was "sub-$100". The price point has been achieved by white box manufacturers in China many times over, but very few have left China and made it to retail at that same price point. With Google's backing, the no-doubt Android-based tablets could reach a worldwide customer base. - Source.

7-inch Whitebox tablet sales still going strong in China

We don't hear all that much about it in Australia these days, but no-name and not-well-known brand 7-inch tablet sales, many of them featuring VIA chips, are still selling like hot-cakes in China.

"As for the tablet market in China, excluding Apple's iPad which enjoys a high popularity in the region, players such as Lenovo, Samsung Electronics and Asustek are all having difficulty competing against the local white-box players due to their rather competitive pricing; however, the first-tier brand vendors still plan to launch 7-inch tablet models with prices around CNY1,000 (US$160) to compete for the market." - Digitimes

With Australia being so close to China, the models are not all that hard to find—eBay is the best place to start.

With ARM's new 64-bit announcement, what will WonderMedia do?

VIA WonderMedia chips were one of the first to be taken up and used by countless Chinese tablet manufacturers, when 7-inch tablets first hit the market. All the designs were fairly similar, and based on VIA WonderMedia WM8750 chips that include an ARM 11 core and are 1080p capable.

ARM have just announced new 64-bit Cortex-A50 series processor designs, licenses for which will be sold to companies like WonderMedia, with their intended usage to be in, not smartphones and tablets, but in servers.

"ARM dominates in smartphones and tablets, but is aiming to make its mark in the server market ruled by x86 chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. There is growing interest in ARM servers as an energy-efficient way to handle large numbers of Web requests such as in search or social networks. Dell and Hewlett-Packard already offer prototype ARM-based servers for testing to customers looking to deploy ARM servers to cut energy bills. However, Intel is also tweaking its low-power Atom processors to work in cloud servers and will release new Atom S-series chips for microservers later this year." - Source.

Will WonderMedia pursue this new avenue?

HTC considering a new tablet

It's interesting that VIA WonderMedia was one of the first chip designers to get enthusiastic about the 7-inch tablet market. I remember visiting the Lunch @ Piero's event in Las Vegas during CES probably five years ago (I think) and seeing 7-inch tablet designs. Other manufacturers had prototypes on their stands, often "UMPCs", but VIA WonderMedia had working products already for sale in China.

Around three years ago there were dozens of 7-inch tablets available across Asia with VIA WonderMedia chips powering them. Only a couple of them actually made it to the Western market in any volume. They were sold as cheap (around the $100 mark) tablets and of course couldn't compete with the iPad hype.

HTC, related to VIA by family ownership, tried to get into the tablet market also with a couple of Windows-based tablets and like just about everyone who went with Microsoft for their OS, success wasn't a word found in their post-launch review documents!

Rumour has it that HTC is considering a new tablet PC. Questions are: 1) will it be Android based this time? Certainly HTC has had huge success with Android on their phone handsets and 2) will they use the resources of "related" companies like VIA WonderMedia or even VIA itself in the design.

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!

New at Cutting Edge Guy

Tablets based on the VIA WonderMedia WM8650 are becoming more readily available. Some of them are actually just simply being called "VIA 8650" like this seven inch design clocking in at 70 Euros. The Android 2.2 tablet can be shipped anywhere and came up on a search I did for WonderMedia tablets in Australia.

* CPU：VIA WM8650 (800MHz CPU+400MHz DSP) * Operating system: Android 2.2 * Language：Support multi-language * Memory: 256MB * Storage Device: 2GB FLASH ( Support external Micro SD card, maximum capacity of 32GB * G-Sensor: 4-Dimensional G-Sensor * LCD: 7" WVGA wide-screen 800*480 * Touch Panel: TFT Resistive Touch Screen( Two point touch), allows for pinch and zoom * Network: Cable Internet: 10/ 100M adapter * WIFI: IEEE802.11b/g/n wireless network * 3G USB Dongle: WCDMA ( Huawei E220/ E230/ E160X/ E169G/E1750, Alcatel X060S/X200 CDMA2000: Bora 9380/AWIT-U8) * I/O Port: 30pin USB switch interface*1; Headphone*1; MIC*1; DC JACK*1l Micro SD card reader Audio: 3.5mm headphone jack * High-quality stereo loud speaker * Built-in Microphone * Media File: * Audio file formats supported: MP2, MP3, WAV, AAC, WMA * Video file formats supported: [MPEG1/2/4,MJPG,H263](1280×720) resolution,H264 (720× 480) resolution. * Photo file formats support: JPG, JPEG, BMP, and PNG. * Camera: Built-in 0.3 mega pixels * Power adapter: 9V, 1.5A * Battery: 1450mAh * Size: 20.58cm * 15.75cm* 1.1cm * Battery life: standby time- above 10 hours/ Video play--3 hours

7 inch iPad look Android tablet

Just to prove that VIA Wondermedia tablets are making their way into Australia I thought I'd point out this Aped Iped which has found itself for sale on eBay Australia. The seller is in Western Australia. I hope it's not due to lack of satisfaction that this "hardly used" tablet being sold. It features the VIA WM8505 chip, 1GB flash storage, 1.3 megapixel camera and supports microSD for more memory.

Look what's in the Gumtree

For two hundred smackers you can pick up a 7 inch Android tablet on Gumtree that is based on the VIA Wondermedia WM8505 ARM 9 chip. It is running an older version of Android, v1.6 and it only has 2GB of onboard flash storage, but what would you expect for $200? The size would make it nice and comfy for surfing the web, social networking and light email when you're on the couch, or ... since it has 2 USB ports you could easily plug in a USB wireless modem and use it for access to the web on the train or whilst studying in a library. It says it has 4 hours battery life which is not bad. Check it out here.

Compal ODM ARM plans

VIA has worked with Compal in the past, supplying processors and chips for ODM netbook and notebooks. DigitTimes has revealed that Compal hopes to bounce back from a loss in 2010 by supplying ARM-based ODM tablets PCs. If the business and project managers at VIA, and/or their subsidiary WonderMedia, are working hard then this could involve VIA ... 'tis all I'm saying!

Android set for big gains with tablets in 2011

CIO Australia has written up quotes from some of the big analysts about Android's predicated rise in popularity in 2011. The catalyst is affordable tablets, much like those made possible by VIA's WonderMedia chip, as well as mobile phones.

"Android is growing as a distributive force against Apple,” Telsyte research director, Foad Fadaghi, said in a statement. “The quality of the platform is improving and gaining significant traction in the developer community.”"

Source: CIO Australia

VIA's displays "during" CES include Android tablets

For many years now, VIA has chosen to run it's own event in Las Vegas when the Consumer Electronics Shows (CES) is being held, but not actually as a company on display at CES. The event is called Lunch @ Piero's and it's in that restaurant that you'll find VIA's whares on display.

In 2011 the focus is on the new Nano X2 processor, Android tablets featuring WonderMedia chips, and the VIA Labs USB 3.0 platform.

VIA has shown the WonderMedia Prizm platform devices at the Lunch @ Piero's event for two years already, but in the past they were smartbooks ... remember that segment that never really took off? Now they're focusing on a design, the tablet, that has already gained wide acceptance.

More info here.

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.

Mio smartbook features VIA platform

Clamshell design devices seem to be the most popular type of mobile computing device. UMPCs and tablet PCs still do a good trade, but for the everyday consumer, a notebook or a smaller version of it is usually the type chosen. The battery life on netbooks hasn't been fabulous. The designs of x86 processors like VIA's C7-M and Nano series have come a long way in addressing the issues of power consumption and that's why they've been favored in netbook designs but when you take a clamshell design even smaller, to 7" screen devices, manufacturers are opting for ARM processors instead, not x86 processors. This doesn't leave VIA short-changed since they have cleverly invested in a subsiduary company, WonderMedia, who manufacture ARM-based platforms for mobile internet devices (MIDs) like smartbooks. Smartbooks are a new breed of ultra portables that shorten the list of features you'd expect on a netbook and increase the battery life.

WindowsForDevices brings news of a smartbook from Haleron which features an ARM 9-based Prizm 8510, one of WonderMedia's babys. "Haleron doesn't specify the resolution provided by the Mio Smartbook's seven-inch screen, but other devices of this type have displayed 800 x 480 pixels. The device comes with 128MB or 256MB of RAM, from 1GB to 4GB of flash storage, and includes an SD expansion slot, according to the company.

As well as offering stereo speakers, a microphone input, and a headphone output, the Mio Smartbook is said to include 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b wireless networking, and three USB ports. The system can be booted from a USB memory stick containing an alternative operating system such as Linux or Android, the company claims. (Misleadingly, Windows XP is also cited as possible, though Haleron elsewhere concedes that this OS requires a $55 "processor upgrade.")"

Months ago the gadget type sites starting murmoring about smartbooks saying that most manufacturers would have them out before the end of the year. With 5-6 weeks left of pre-Christmas sales, the Haleron Mio is already on the market for US$190. Haleron ships worldwide, taking orders online.