What to expect from mobile internet devices in 2010

This is a guest post from Intel Insider Steve “Chippy” Paine, the mobile technology expert behind CarryPad, MIDMoves and UMPCPortal.com.

In this post I want to take a quick look around me. Back into 2009 and then forward into 2010. I’m standing in the middle of MIDsville right now so lets see what we can see.

2009 was a great year for MIDs and UMPCs. The ‘Menlow’ platform gave designers some great flexibility and one of the key devices for me was the Viliv X70. With it came a huge step forward in battery life, silent operation, some great new features like 3G and GPS at a great price. When I think back to comparable devices in 2006, it’s amazing to see the progress. The UMID M1 was a ground-breaker too. Try finding any PC with a battery-life to weight ratio of 4hrs/11.1 oz!

It’s great to see OEMS learning about productive design too. The Eking S515, a recently introduced device, shows how form and function can sit together. The slider design is one to watch for 2010 too because it’s a difficult one for designers and needs smaller, more efficient platforms.

That’s why I’m excited to be thinking about Moorestown.

 One can’t ignore the advances that ARM-based devices have made but it seems that they still haven’t reached the processing power required for a full, flowing, pro-sumer web experience. Not everyone needs it, that’s for sure, but it’s something that manufacturers and marketing teams are aiming for. Developers will be happy too. As HTML5 becomes reality over the next few years, processing power for the browser is going to be more important than ever. That’s where Moorestown and it’s ability to scale from a power-efficient state to full web power becomes interesting.

With Moblin developing at a fast pace, Moblin for handhelds due to launch, the Intel Atom Developer Program and a growing interest in web-connected devices in all categories from smartphones through tablets, mini laptops all the way to netbooks, it will be very interesting to see how developers react to a single software stack, SDK and app-store potentially running across multiple device categories. As far as I’m aware, that’s a first in any category of computing devices.

2010 will see more mobile-internet device activity than ever before. More players will enter the market. Positioning will become clearer and OEMS will have a big choice of platforms but at the center of it will be the web-based and web-connected applications. Having a platform that gives the end users a smooth enjoyable web experience will be of utmost importance.

Related article: What Moorestown means for consumers.

Editors note:  Intel will be sponsoring Chippy’s trip to join Intel at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show.  We sponsored his trip to the recent Intel Developer Forum held in San Francisco this past September, and here he is with friends talking about their favorite mobile devices at that time.