MID Trend at CES

Judging from the news that have been filtering out of CES, there seems to be an abundance of new MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) being introduced at the show. Whether the flurry of product intros are in response to the wide publicity afforded the OLPC and the Asus Eee PC, as well as the latter’s success or just a natural progression of the development of UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PCs) is of course arguable. What is not is the continuous emphasis of manufacturers to focus on this market segment.

Just some of the devices introduced at the CES:




LG unit has keyboard, touch-screen with stylus, HSDPA data, Menlow chipset, 4.8-inch WVGA display and Windows Vista. Details here.




Aigo MID's features include Intel Menlow chip, Linux OS with iPhone-like UI, touchscreen. More details here.



Digifriends MID - Wintel (Menlow/Vista) device can you can snap on all kinds of add-ons to it, like a gamepad, keyboard, stand, speakers, and a hard drive. The overall feel wasn't wildly different from the other MIDs we saw, but the possibilities of expanding it easily are enticing. Details here.




Qualcomm Anchorage prototype reference design features the new Snapdragon chipset, a heap of silicon said to offer one of the best power to performance ratios in the mobile world. Another model, the "Fairbanks" has dedicated GPS unit, a 3 megapixel camera, TV tuner, and microSD expansion on some sort of custom Windows CE base. More details here.

2008 should be an interesting year. :)