14 DAY TRIAL // According to the latest reports published by ABI research, Intel has been placed on the top position of its Vendor Matrix rankings. The second and third positions on the same rankings have been occupied by Texas Instruments and Via Technologies. The rankings published by the research firm are their new evaluation of worldwide netbook platform vendors.
“Today, Intel has key customers shipping products in volume. x86-based solutions allow netbook vendors the flexibility to create one product with the option to run Linux or Windows,” says principal analyst Philip Solis. “However, we expect ARM-based vendors to become more competitive here as netbooks evolve to be much lighter, thinner, and cheaper with longer battery life, and as consumers come to accept Linux OSs more readily.”
ABI Research has developed the Vendor Matrix as an analytical tool meant to offer a clear understanding of vendors’ positions in specific markets. Some of the most important parameters as “innovation” and “implementation” are taken into consideration when it comes to several criteria unique to each vendor matrix.
Coming down to this particular matrix, for the “innovation” parameter, ABI Research has examined the time vendors needed to bring products to the market, the flexibility of their solutions or designs, the bundling of WWAN, WPAN and/or GPS, the use of x86 or Cortex A-8 (or higher) processors, as well as the products’ support for 720p HD video.
Moving on to “implementation,” ABI Research took into consideration the announced design wins by each vendor, their experience with CE and mobile device vendors, their experience with PC vendors, the support offered for all PC operating systems, as well as the support offered for all lower level operating systems.
The Netbook Platform Vendor Matrix comes as a part of a series of vendor matrices for UMDs. The same criteria for platform vendors apply to all three, yet the importance of the criteria is different for each type of UMD. A chart that shows the rankings of the “top five” companies in this Vendor Matrix is available here (the ABI Research website will require a free registration).