Date: 03/09/2009

Smartbook was the top attraction at Freescale Semiconductor's event in Bangalore

At the Freescale technology forum in Bangalore, Freescale processor based smartbook from Pegatron was displayed for the users to experience it's features. It is a 9.1-inch screen smartbook with 8 hours battery backup. This smartbook is expected to cost less then 200$ when it hits the market in coming months. Freescale Semiconductor has designed processors exclusively for the portable internet-dependent personal media-gadget for netizens. Freescale prefer to call this net-dependent device as smart book rather than a netbook.

The processor powering this notebook is ARM Cortex based i.MX515 SoC from Freescale. This processor works fanless and consumes less power than X86 based processors. What it lacks is, it doesn't support windows XP and Vista. It works on an Ubuntu Linux and supports other such Linux versions. This processor also supports Google's Android and Chrome OS.

The opinion among the visitors was the smart book even without windows support could do well in the market. The non-office application using Internet surfers are going to be the major buyers of this kind of a product.

Along with Freescale, the other early semiconductor vendors with exclusive devices for netbook market are Qualcomm (Snapdragon) and Texas Instruments (OMAP3) with ARM processor cores.

The distinction between mobile phone and a portable computer has blurred further in all aspects. Nokia is now expanding into netbook space, and also portable-computer OEMs have already expanded into smart phone area.

Other than the smartbook, no other exciting new product found at the Freescale technology forum. Other products displayed include devices for automotive industrial and lighting applications, which Freescale has developed sometime back.