Intel Teases Tasty Tizen Tablets

LAS VEGAS — Remember Tizen? You know, Intel's Linux-based OS, which evolved from MeeGo when Nokia bailed. Surprise: It's one of three OSes Intel is hoping to get onto tablets this year, along with the better-known Windows 8 and Android 4.0 "."

"In our tablet business, we made a commitment to move a lot faster," said Mark Miller, director of marketing for Intel's netbook and tablet segments. "We have a lot of room to make up."

Here at CES, that includes showing off a slim, light Lenovo Android-powered tablet that runs on Intel's new Medfield Atom Z2460 chipset. The Lenovo tablet (shown at left) is under 9mm thick and runs for up to eight hours on a charge. It'll be coming midyear, Miller said.

In the U.S., it may also be followed by tablets from Motorola—although Miller cautioned that "we don't have anything to announce with Motorola on tablets yet." Yesterday, to build phones and tablets based on Intel chips.

Intel will be pitching unique advantages for its chipsets in Android tablets, including great speed and Intel's Wi-Di wireless display technology. But Android is "very competitive," which means "we see Windows 8 as being a great opportunity for the next two years," Miller said.

Big-name PC brands will bring Intel-based tablets to market this year, Miller said.

"We have our eye on some very top-tier OEMs ... I'd say it's heavily weighted to some of our traditional customers who are looking to take advantage of Clover Trail," he said.

Android Vs. Windows 8
While we may see a few Intel Android tablets, we're going to see a lot of Intel-based Windows 8 tablets towards the end of the year. They'll run on Clover Trail, Intel's next tablet chipset with even better power management than Medfield. The big advantage of Intel on Windows tablets over competing chips from Nvidia and Qualcomm, of course, is that the Intel tablets will run older Windows apps without modification.

"The traditional desktop apps will automatically run, so for somebody who is looking for the familiar Windows experience, Clover Trail is going to be able to provide it," he said.

Of course, Intel is in the opposite situation with Android, where most apps are coded for the competing ARM chip architecture.

About 75 percent of Android apps are architecture-agnostic, Intel's John Wallace said, but Intel has been working closely with Google to bring developers using Android's Native Development Kit over to Intel compatibility, he said. The upcoming will support about 90 percent of the available Android apps, and Intel is figuring out how to support real-time, binary translation to cover the other 10 percent, he said.

So, About Tizen...
And then there's Tizen. Nokia pulled out of its alliance with Intel to promote the MeeGo operating system last year, and Intel shortly afterwards announced that MeeGo would evolve into Tizen in an alliance with Samsung—but we haven't heard much about devices running the new open-source OS since then.

We may see Tizen on tablets sold by wireless carriers. Tablet makers and especially carriers are interested in Tizen "because it enables them to differentiate," Miller said. "They can add a lot more to the UI." Yes, that means they're looking at Tizen because they feel they can't skin Android enough.

The new OS will rely heavily on HTML5 for apps, which should enable it to ramp up pretty quickly in terms of number of apps available, he said.

Miller's Tizen tidbit came a little out of the blue, and he hinted that we may hear more about Tizen next month at Mobile World Congress.

"That transition to Tizen may happen next quarter; a lot of it has to be worked through, and development plans are still being worked on," he said.