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Archos has a history of pumping out low-cost tablets and PMPs, albeit ones with relatively high-quality given the price charged. Now, the company has revealed the Arnova 9 G2 tablet, with a 1GHz ARM A8 processor, 9.7″ IPS display, 1024×768 screen resolution and Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread. That’s right, Gingerbread. These days, we’re expecting Android tablets to ship with at least Honeycomb, if not a promise to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s a bit hard to justify a tablet of this size running Android 2.3, but we suspect the price point will be low enough to still entice those…

This time next year we might see on the market a smartphone released by Amazon to challenge Apple’s iPhones, according to analysts’ predictions. This is more than a hearsay flying around without any support, thinks Mark Mahaney, analyst for Citigroup. He wrote a note to the investors suggesting that according to information came from the supply chain, the e-commerce giant will release a branded smartphone in time for the next year’s holiday season. More specifically, he wrote with all the confidence “Based on our supply chain channel checks in Asia led by Kevin Chang, Citi’s Taipei-based hardware research analyst, we…

Dell this week said that it has replaced over 15,000 Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry handsets in the company with Windows Phone devices. That should be a major win for Microsoft’s smartphone platform, but there’s just one problem: Dell is using its own previous generation Windows Phone devices as it has thus far declined to release new versions based on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. Dell Global CIO Robin Johnson said that while the company used to be “a major Blackberry shop,” it has now replaced about 50% of its BlackBerry devices with Windows Phones. Using your own product seems to…

Though devices for reading electronic books with close to a tablet PC functionality were present on the market before, only the launch of the Kindle Fire allowed Amazon to make a bid for success in the segment of “purebred tablets”. But in spite of positioning Kobo Vox eReader device, produced by Kobo, as a solution for reading eBooks, for the price and functionality this device can compete with the Kindle Fire. The device came into the market on 28th October, 2011. In any case, the price of a new device is US$199.99 (€145.40), for which a consumer receives a seven-inch…

A survey of Australian PC vendors indicates that several are “wary” of carrying too much Google’s Android tablet stock and that several manufacturers will dump Android tablets as soon as Microsoft’s Windows 8 Operating System (OS) for tablets becomes available in mid-2012. According to both Samsung and Toshiba executives, demand for Windows 8 tablets could swamp sales of Android tablets leaving the tablet market to a combination of Apple’s iPad and Windows 8 tablets. Eight out of 10 PC vendors approached by SmartHouse said that they anticipted Windows 8 tablets would outsell Android based tablets and that they would “seriously…

Things are getting a bit more interesting in the ongoing fight between Microsoft and Barnes & Noble. You’ll remember that earlier this year, Microsoft began suing Barnes & Noble (B&N) for refusing to fork over Google’s Android-related fees from the Nook Color. Barnes & Noble has responded, alleging in its motion that Microsoft “is using its licensing practices to improperly broaden the scope of its patents in an attempt to dominate mobile Operating Systems such as Android that threaten Microsoft’s monopoly in personal computer (“PC”) Operating Systems.” It may sound odd at first that Microsoft would be at Android’s throat…

In the world of smartphones, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is barely a blip. It has, by some estimates, less than 6% market share. Google’s Android now owns half the market and Apple’s iOS about 26%. This isn’t right. You see, the Windows Phone 7 is a good — possibly great — mobile platform. It’s better, in our opinion, than Android and nibbling at the heels of our favorite, iOS and the iPhone. To understand why things are so out of whack and why we believe they could change, we need to take a closer look at a Windows Phone —…