14 DAY TRIAL // Companies from all around the world have been offering sneak peeks at their tablets, so it is not altogether surprising to learn that a certain outfit from China, Hanvon by name, is getting ready to release one of its own.
While the ARM architecture does seem to have become a bit more popular as far as tablets go, the Intel Atom CPUs are not out of the fight yet.
In fact, even though the Pine Trail platform was not meant for tablets to begin with (it was designed fro netbooks), it still scored a few design wins in this area.
Mostly, this is because consumers still want Windows 7 slates, even though Android has evolved enough to serve slates quite well, because of the PC-like functionality.
Regardless, a certain company based in China, known as Hanvon, has begun to seriously prepare for when it will start sending out its own products.
As Digitimes has it, the company is building what it calls the TouchPad B10, its first ever tablet PC running Windows 7.
Not much is known about it, except that it will have a Toshiba 1.8-inch HDD, an Intel Atom N455 CPU, a flat panel screen from HannStar and a touch-controller module from Sintek Photronics.
Shipments of this device begun in December, this month as it were, to First International Computer (FIC), which is based in Taiwan.
FIC volume shipments are currently at between 2,000 and 4,000 per month, and will keep to this figure for a while.
This, of course, is happening in preparation for the actual release of the device, an event set to take place in January.
As such, the Hanvon TouchPad B10 will be faced with quite a bit of competition, since next month is also the time of arrival for many other Windows 7 or Android tablets.
As for its own Android slates, Hanvon plans to launch them during the second quarter of 2011, at least according to the industry sources cited in the aforementioned report.