The Intel Corp’s plan to expand the market for their low-power processors meant for the tablets and smart phones, a segment dominated by ARM, couldn’t impress ARM Holdings plc, the head of British chip designer.

Though ARM considers Intel to be one of their chief competitors, they don’t find them impressive in their power efficient products. Warren East, ARM CEO confirmed at the CES 2012 that successfully ended at Las Vegas yesterday.

East regards the efforts put forward by Intel as “good enough” but not at all competitive to their designs.

“They (Intel) have taken some designs that were never meant for mobile phones and they’ve literally wrenched those designs and put them into a power-performance space which is roughly good enough for mobile phones,” East told the media at the CES.

Intel used the CES platform to announce their entrance into the smart phone and tablet chip market and unleashed their plans for Lenovo phones and Motorola Mobility using Google’s Android System based on new ‘Medfield’ chip from Intel.

ARM with their design licenses for 275 chip makers as well as hardware & software firms almost rules over the market and has nothing to fear from Intel’s market plans.

In fact, ARM has got Microsoft Corp running their all new Windows 8 OS on the tablets based on ARM chip designs coming up in the near future and is pretty happy to have the deal with the company that has been an important ally of Intel.

It was at the CES 2011 where Microsoft has announced their plans to come up with AMR compatible Windows 8, however no release date for the system was declared. ARM hasn’t any problem and is ready to wait as much as may be required.

“We’ve waited a long time for this to happen. Another six months, another 12 months doesn’t matter. “I’d much rather wait however long it takes to get a quality experience than compromise,” said East.

Hope you haven’t forgotten the AT200 tablet that Toshiba had announced at the IFA conference held in Berlin last year? Unfortunately, it never hit the market anyway, the company came up with its CES announcements yesterday and re-announced the 10.1 inch tablet and the best thing is that it now has its own official commercial name – Excite X10.

This incredibly thin device has a width of 7.7mm which happens to be about 1 mm thinner than iPad2 and Galaxy Tab. It sports aluminum back which makes it more uniquely snazzier compared to the other available tablets that come with plastic body which easily get smudged. Its IPS panel is covered with Corning Gorilla Glass and provides really wide viewing angles together with a native resolution of 1280X800. The processing in the device is done by a dual core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4430. In the September of 2011, it was popularized to be superior to Tegra 2 from Nvidia, but now it’s the time that we got to check out how good it stands to quad-core Tegra 3 tablets.

It provides connectivity through 802.11n Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0; micro-sized USB, SD & HDMI ports, doing justice with the slender profile of the device. Other features of the device include DLNA support, dual HD cameras 2MP on front and 5MP on the back offering 1080p video capture capability; GPS & built-in compass; stereo speakers with SRS. However, at the initial level, device won’t be offering any mobile broadband connectivity options.

Toshiba will be presenting their Excite X10 with Android 4.0 “Ice Creame Sandwich” once the device gets available in the market by first mid quarter of 2012. It will be available in two capacities namely 16GB and 32GB with $529 and $599 price tags respectively. Excite X10 will be Toshiba’s premium tablet offering along with the already existing devices making up their ‘mainstream’ options that will be available for $380 for 8GB, $400 for 16GB, and $480 for 32GB. A 4G AT&T HSPA+ option for 16GB device will also be offered by Toshiba at the CES at a price of $480, which won’t require any contract.

Other than its upcoming 10-inch tablet, Toshiba will also be displaying its Portégé Z835 Ultrabook at the CES starting this week. This 13.3 inch laptop will be offering a 1366×768 matte display, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, second generation Intel Core processors & Integrated Intel graphics, spill resistant keyboard, a full sized backlit & spill resistant keyboard. The internet connectivity will be offered by three USB ports each being USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA-out, Wi-Fi and Wi-Di. With its pricing starting at mere $819.

A leaked picture has come to our notice that has given some authenticity to the rumors related to the forthcoming smaller equivalent of Asus’ 10 inch Transformer Prime. Though it has not yet been made clear that would it be one or two of the 7 inch devices coming up with speculations around the 7 inch Transformer Prime as well as a refreshed version of the last year’s Eee Pad Memo.

However, the rumors around are confidently announcing that either one or may be a blend of the both will be making its presence during the Consumer Electronic Show this year.

The picture of the device published by Notebook Italia, an online media brought the device to the world which is quite similar to the Transformer Prime in terms of its aesthetics and has some resemblance with the Memo which is found to have bulkier edge. The rumor monger site is pretty sure that the mini Transformer will be introduced as a separate device but interestingly no specifications are revealed yet other than the commonly known ones like – a hardware keyboard attachment, Android (probably Ice Cream Sandwich), and a price tag which can easily be afforded (something like $299).

Notebook Italia seems quite sure that the overhauled Eee Pad Memo will be available with a capacitive display of 1280X800, Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor of 1.2Hz, an integrated flash memory of between 16GB to 64GB and Wi-Fi as well as 3G connectivity. And there’s also a possibility of Ice Cream Sandwich to be present at the time of the launch. Though extra details are yet to be made available, on the basis of the name of the device, it is being assumed that the device will be supporting pen input as well as the handwriting software.

These upcoming products from Asus will be competing with numerous other second-gen products in the 7 and 10 inch product range. Sadly, the market hardly looks any changed compared to how it was doing last year. However, it appears there will be a little less cluttering as some of the major playing PC makers would be concentrating on the Ultrabooks in place of tablets. But then, there are sure signs that the first half of 2012 will be ruled by Apple’s iPad & Amazon’s Kindle Fire and some of the Android devices that have made some place in the market.

Chipmaker Intel and Google, the internet giant has got into a development partnership. This development partnership is basically to improve the processors of the mobile phone and tablet that runs on Android system.

It is believed that this move will give Intel a better access to one of the fastest advancing segments of the industry. Presently, Intel happens to be the largest chipmaker in the computer and server market of the world. But it is equally notable that till now the company couldn’t be successful in creating smaller chips with better power efficiency.

As of lately, there is an increase in the demand of mobile phones and tablets. This has made Google to push its Android operating system and getting tied up with manufacturers.

Android enjoys being the world’s topmost operating system for the smart phones.

Intel had to face a touch competition from its rival ARM Holdings of UK that managed to produce such chips that will suit the smaller and more portable kind of devices.

This partnership between Intel and Google will surely work well in helping Intel in enhancing its presence in the Android market.

David Kanter of Real World Technologies has told the media that Google believes that Intel is soon going to become a first class citizen in the Android ecosystem.

Mozilla is doing excellently well in taking up new ventures from time to time, as its regular updates are hitting the browser pretty frequently, here Mozilla is looking forward to release a brand new Firefox browser for Android 3.0 tablets pretty soon.

Ian Barlow, the user experience designer of Mozilla mobile device made aware of this by posting some mock-ups of the browser on his personal blog.

It’s been just a little while that Mozilla brought out Firefox for Android smart phones. It first came out in its beta version but then was released in its full version. However, the version for Android tablets doesn’t offer as rich an experience as desktop version. This is because in order to create a better phone version, many of the UI elements had to be kept off by Mozilla so that the space on small screens can be made free. Notably, many of the popular features of the desktop variant of the browser are found on the larger tablets as they don’t have any space restrictions like the smaller tablets and mobiles.

Barlow has announced that the Firefox for tablets is going to have many new enhancements made compared to its predecessors so that it can utilize the benefits of the larger screen size of the tablet.

One of the UI that will be coming back will be the tabs, which are generally kept hidden in the smart phone browser for the space restriction. Usually, the tabs on the tablets work in two ways. They are either in the landscape mode; in this case the tabs are visible on the screen’s left side as small thumbnails of each of the open page; or in the portrait mode, in which the tabs are placed in the drop-down style menu groups that increases the usability.

The minimalist design of Honeycomb will be utilized by the tablet version of the Firefox but still some of the most popular elements will be included by Mozilla such as its distinctive tab shape, Awesomebar URL entry field, and oversized back button.

But it is hardly known how long one will have to wait for it as the release date has not yet been announced.

Logitech already has its name in the field of PC speakers and now it has dashed into the tablet space with its brand new Logitech Tablet Speaker.

If you’re thinking it to be a Bluetooth speaker, you need to know that it isn’t that, instead it is the one which can be docked up on to the tablet and comes along with a jack that gets plugged into the port meant for the headphone.

Though it isn’t a wireless accessory, there isn’t any need of a power adapter as it has build-in rechargeable battery that helps the speaker work well for as long as 8 hours and can then be charged with the help of USB.

In the recent preview event of Logitech, it was found that its sound is far better than the internal speakers of iPad. Of course, one can’t expect disc like music effect as it doesn’t offer lot of bass thing.

Logitech Tablet Speaker has been priced at $50 and it works well with almost any tablet. It is actually designed to be used with the larger tablet models and when you use it with a larger slate, it fits perfectly well and works like a stand for the tablet tilting it at around 20 degree angle.

Amazon is again in the news with its amazing plan to introduce an Android tablet which is going to have about a 9 inch screen. It won’t be offering a camera, however the Amazon customers will be able to watch videos, listen to digital music, and most importantly read their favorite electronic books, which they will either have to purchase or get on rent from online retailers. This tablet is going to be out sometimes before October.

Other than that, it is reported that the company is also going to roll out updated black and white versions of its much acclaimed Kindle electronic reader in Q3 2011. The first updated version is going to be a touch screen device and the other one is going to be an enhanced and inexpensive alteration of the Kindle currently available in the market.

Amazon was in the news last month also, and the buzz had it that it was about to launch tablet models sometimes in August or September of this year. If the buzz is to be believed these tablets would soon be out and will be targeted to the global market with sales of 4 million units for this year itself. It would have involvement of Quanta Computer for assembling the processors developed by Texas Instruments, touch panels from Taiwan based Wintek, and LCD driver ICs from ILI Technology. Streaming movie services are also to be provided to the users by Amazon.

Again, there was another rumor around two months ago, according to which Amazon would be bringing out two different tablets by the end of 2011. These would include a dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 platform based entry level tablet named Coyote and the other one named Hollywood, based on  quad core Kal-El platform from Nvidia Tegra, and perhaps this platform would be called Tegra 3.

Perhaps, Amazon is the favorite of the rumor mongers as it has been highly active in the rumors and the buzz saying that Amazon is going to build a tablet has been around for quite sometimes now, however, it started up some three months back. Then it was also in the talks that it would involve Samsung for building the Android tablet.

Jeff Bezos, the president of Amazon has also observed that the Amazon tablets in the pipeline will prove highly beneficial compared to the decision of replacing the current Kindle.

Kindle is the most popular and most selling product from Amazon. And thus, company is looking forward to take it further by reducing the price and introducing new tablets with higher prices than the price of Kindle. This way the present Kindle will attract education and consumer market whereas the other expensive tablets will be bringing in the buyers from the normal e-book readers.

Acer along with Motorola has come up with an upgrade of Android to ‘Honeycomb’ 3.1 for the Iconia tablet PCs in the very start of this week.

From today itself all the Iconia A500 owners will be sent a message telling them about an option that will let them upgrade to Honeycomb 3.1. This upgrading will get improved performance of the system and the USB and Bluetooth devices such as keyboards and mice will also be better supported.

It started up with the Honeycomb 3.1 update last week concurrent with the Wi-Fi-only Xoom tablet’s release.

The other features this update includes support for HTML5 video content, additional video file format, Microsoft Exchange server support also known as Active Sync, and Wi-Fi networking.

David Niu, the product manager of the Acer Computer Australia’s smart hand held devices announced that all the Iconia Tab A500 owner will be sent a notification today itself which will tell them about the update meant for the improvement of the entire user experience.

The latest 3.1 upgrade will prove great for the business users as it makes email accounts management easier; special back up and restoration across the system updates and resets for the proxy and IP address configuration; devices that have emulated storage cards and encrypted primary storage are offered a special encrypted storage and device policy.

Iconia A500 and A100 tablets were launched by Acer in March and were shipped with Google Android Honeycomb 3.0 and now both will be receiving 3.1 update.

A500 comes powered with dual core Nvidia Tegra2 and the offered connectivity is Wi-Fi alone or it is Wi-Fi along with 3G. A HDMI port for 1080p video out is also offered by it.

Logitech recently released the rebranded Zaggmate Keyboard Case for iPad (for $99.99 direct, 3.5 stars). Now the peripheral manufacturer has finally got ready to try out its hands in the tablet market. So now it has decided to bring out a line of devices for iOS and Android.

The Tablet Keyboard meant for Android and iPad will be available with a carrying case. The plus point of the hard shell case of the keyboard is that it does dual work of being a case as well as a stand for the Android or the iPad tablet. This stand can be displayed both vertically and horizontally depending on what you need.  It comes along with pre-installed 4AAA batteries; however, the company hasn’t disclosed the battery life.

The Tablet Keyboard meant for Android offers compatibility with Android OS 3.0 and above and also with the devices with Bluetooth (HID profile). The device meant for the iPad supports both iPad 1 and 2 and has the capability to use the Bluetooth in order to connect to the iOS devices, this makes it possible to get the keyboard connected to iPhone as well as iPod Touch.

But since, most Android based smartphones don’t come with the support for the required HID Bluetooth profile, this will create a likelihood of the compatible Android devices to be restricted to work as tablets.

Other than the conventional QWERTY layout that is found on every keyboard, Logitech has made an addition of play/pause and volume control that will help you control your media.

Logitech also has the inclusion of a Bluetooth wireless mouse in its list of new additions. But since, these tablets are touch enabled and are not designed for the mouse usage so it appears that mouse hardly has anything to offer in this area.

It is very likely that the Logitech Tablet Keyboard both for iPad and Android (for 69.99 direct) as well as the Tablet Mouse (for 49.99 direct) will be available by the May end but one can hit the Logitech’s official website for pre-ordering them.

Asus officially brought out its Eee Pad Transformer in Taiwan on 25^th March at CeBit 2011. Its primary system consists of an Android tablet of 10.1 inch that comes along with a chiclet style keyboard dock which is its optional part and converts the device into a netbook. The availability of the slate in the US has not yet been confirmed though its price has been estimated to be an equivalent of approximate 500 US dollars and the keyboard is estimated to cost around $100.

The device has some remarkable features like Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Gorilla Glass capacitive touchscreen of 1289X800 IPS along with its flexibility. The tablet’s 0.51 inch body weighs 1.49 pound which comes packed up with a dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC, rear and front cameras of 5 and 1.2 MP respectively. It also offers storage of 16 GB to 64 GB along with an expansion slot of Micro SD and a RAM of 1 GB.

There are plenty of other exciting specifications that the device offers, that include speakers and audio jacks; USB 2.0 and HDMI ports; Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity; and other connectivity like gyroscope, G-sensor, Light sensor, GPS, and e-compass. The system comes preloaded with the ‘Waveshare’ interface of Asus that includes MyLibrary which is a digital bookstore, MyNet which streams the media to the networked devices, and MyCloud which is a cloud storage and remote access tool.

Eee Pad Transformer has a slight similarity with Lenovo’s Idea Pad U1 Hybrid. However, it is not entirely based on separate Windows 7 machine of $800. Asus hasn’t made the Transformer super sophisticated but it did provide it with a second battery which almost makes the runtime of the tablet double. So, with its double battery option, one gets a runtime of 16 hours which is almost the double of its original runtime of 9.5 hours which is indeed a good buy at a price of $100.