ubuntu-tablet team mailing list archive

[brian mullan <bmullan.mail@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 7:10 AM, Chris Billington <
billington.chris@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The tablet PCs or special purpose devices that have shipped in significant
> numbers are those where the manufacturer controls the hardware design as
> well as the software. For example: iPad, Nook, Kindle Color. Of those, two
> are USA-only.


If you are saying you can only buy them here.. why couldn't you buy them
from the web

If you are saying you can't use them outside of the US...   if we're
talking about installing a customized ARM linux onto the device... I would
assume that linux distro has the normal internationalization capabilities.

ARM is also controlled by  http://arm.com/.



There are many Android tablets, but those (mostly) conform to a hardware
> spec set by Google.
>
> If we continue to chase the rest of the market by developing for
> proprietary platforms that are 'owned' by a third party, we will be
> consigned to playing catch-up forever, reverse-engineering and perfecting
> hardware support just in time for the maker to replace the platform with a
> new model.
>
> As evidence of this, the 'reference platform' for ARM in 12.04 is the
> Toshiba AC100- a nice little machine (I have one) but obsolete since 2010.
> Now we are proposing to develop and prove tablet functionality on the
> Transformer, which has already been superseded. It's an exercise of
> academic interest only, commercially speaking.
>
> Only hobbyists and technically-savvy enthusiasts are going to buy obsolete
> devices and go through the pain of making Ubuntu work properly on them.
> It's not a '95% certain to work' exercise on ARM like it is on x86. I would
> suggest that unless an initiative to design/develop hardware and software
> together with an OEM is organised, Ubuntu is going to remain what it is
> now, a fractional-percentage player in the market, unknown to the vast
> majority. That means organising marketing and distribution to selected
> markets and setting up post-sales support too.
>

lots of effort being made in ARM today by linux,  debian runs on several
popular ARM based tablets already.
there is the work being done by  http://www.linaro.org/

One potential for 'cheating to get to market faster would be to use the
> Android hardware platform as reference specification, and release a
> distribution that supports the most common 'China OEM' Android hardware
> platforms as a drop-in replacement, but there are still the issues of
> bootloader/kernel and hardware support to solve. However, without a serious
> approach with potential to sell at least hundreds of thousands of units,
> the OEM manufacturers are not going to do much beyond signing an NDA or
> shipping a sample. Is Canonical doing anything about talking to OEMs?
>
> regards
> Chris
>
>
>
> On 18 February 2012 20:19, brian mullan <bmullan.mail@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Why not target a favorite distro to a couple of the most popular existing
>> tablets
>>
>> Low-priced media tablets showed tremendous sales growth in 2011, with an
>> estimated 7.5 million units combined from *Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
>> *
>> iHS found that tablets from those two companies accounted for 11 percent
>> of the TOTAL tablet market<http://www.isuppli.com/Display-Materials-and-Systems/News/Pages/Apples-Toughest-Competition-in-the-Fourth-Quarter-Tablet-Market-Was-Apple.aspx>.
>>
>>
>> B&N and Amazon's Nook/Kindle tables rapid market-share grab didn’t hurt
>> Apple iPads sales but it did appear to hold back sales of other Android
>> tablets.
>>
>> I own a Nook Tablet and its hw specs include OMAP4 dual core, IPS
>> displays, graphics hw accel, wifi bgn, bluetooth, 1G ram, 16G internal
>> storage, supports usb, 32GB uSSD, no camera or HDMI.
>>
>> I'd love to get a native linux onto this tablet which is great hw for
>> $249 with Ebay happening to have a sale of new from B&N for just $200
>> through this weekend.
>>
>> Canonical's ARM work has really accelerated over the past year, work with
>> Linaro.org's ARM effort and I think they are going to support OMAP4 as one
>> target.
>>
>> Why not focus and target the most popular existing market leaders...
>> Nook, and Kindle Tablets and maybe Samsung and/or ASUS.
>>
>> Those tablets are all popular for a reason... price, quality of
>> components, hackability (Nooks are great at this), or hw specs... sometimes
>> its just because of the OS (android v3.x versus v4.x).
>>
>> HW manufacturing is expensive even if its outsourced for any new tablet.
>>
>> Why not build Distro support for what could be an existing community of
>> potential tablet users and enable others to just go buy one of those and
>> install linux easily ?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
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