IEEE Spectrum July, 2009 - 8

10 902 mEtErS

the deepest dive ever, performed 31 may 2009 at the mariana trench in the western Pacific
Ocean. the victorious vehicle was Nereus, an unmanned submarine tethered to the surface by
an optical fiber. the sub, built by engineers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic institution, can operate either remotely or autonomously.

SIZe MAtteRS: is there room
in an iPhone world for the
mobile internet Device?
photoS: Left, CLArIoN; rIGht, AppLe

Little Mass Appeal
for Intel's Mobile
Internet Device
A device to fill the gap between smartphones
and netbooks struggles to find a market

he mobile-computingdevice market is a little
like the car market. On
the high end, you've got your
big, fully loaded luxury models-
that would be your large-screen
laptops. On the low end, you've
got your park-anywhere, useminimal-power gizmos-your
smartphones. In between, you've
got a range of sedans and lowcost compacts-your tablet PCs,
subnotebooks, and netbooks.
Seems like plenty of variety
in that lineup, but Intel-for
more than a year now and hot
on the heels of its promotion of
netbooks-has been evangelizing
a new entrant, a device it calls
the MID computer, for Mobile
Internet Device. Others refer to
it as the ultracompact computer
or the tweener. As described
at multiple industry events by
Intel, such a computer would fill
a niche, being more portable and
less power hungry than a netbook,
yet having a bigger screen and
providing more functions than
a smartphone. Intel's vision,
originally a device about the size
of a standard videocassette, seems
now to be shifting to embrace
multiple shapes and sizes.
www.spectrum.ieee.org

It's no coincidence that Intel
has the perfect processor to power
such a computer-the Atom,
launched last year. It's powerful
enough to run full versions of
standard software, like Microsoft
Office. It's efficient enough to do
so for hours without recharging.
(You'll rarely see a netbook user
today without a power cord.) So
indeed, you could build a small,
powerful, efficient MID computer.
But if you build it, will they
come?
The answer, says Dave Blakely
of Ideo, the Palo Alto, Calif., firm
that did the product design for
the original Apple mouse and the
Palm V-is maybe.
"It is an entirely viable product
for a small slice of the mobile
computing population," says
Blakely, Ideo's senior director in
charge of technology strategy.
"But that is a fractured slice. I can't
name a single significant market
segment or single killer app."
As examples of those slivers
of the computer market, Blakely
points to women who carry purses
big enough to make the size
difference between a smartphone
and a MID computer irrelevant.
They might pick the MID for its

better movie viewing. He also
thinks that road warriors who do a
lot of videoconferencing might also
prefer a device with a bigger screen
than what's on a smartphone.
"I can name lots of potential
users, but none add up to massive
success," Blakely says.
Pankaj Kedia, director of
global ecosystem programs
at Intel, agrees that there are
clusters of types of users rather
than a single big market segment.
He describes the MID computer
as a flexible concept rather than
a specific size and shape. "The
devices are very personal, subject
to personal taste," he says.
Says Kedia, "It may be
pocketable, a smartphone
replacement. For that I want the
screen size to be 4 inches, to fit in
my jeans pocket. For navigation, in
your car, research has shown that
a 5-inch display is more optimal. In
the enterprise space, interviewing
clients, looking at data, you need a
6- to 7-inch display."
Indeed, points out Ken Dulaney,
a vice president and distinguished
analyst with Gartner Research,
Intel is right to back down on its
original vision of the MID as a
new class of all-purpose lifestyle
computers, because that just isn't
going to happen. "Intel badly
miscalculated this space," he says.
"The iPhone showed that people
want a slightly smaller product
that can be used as a convenient
phone; you can't put a MID in
your shirt pocket or hold it up to
your head."
Still, it might not be smart to
completely write off this device. "It
has a shot," says Blakely. "We've
seen a history of products with
brand-new form factors appear in
the world: There were people who
thought the Sony Walkman would
never make it."
-Tekla S. Perry

news
briefs
BENDABLE
MEMRISTORS
Researchers at
the National
Institute of
Standards and
Technology
report that
they've
developed a
flexible memory
that acts much
like the new
fundamental
circuit element
known as the
memristor. The
memristor's
resistance
changes
according to
how much
current passes
through it, and
it maintains its
resistance when
the power is
turned off. The
NIST device still
functions even
after being flexed
4000 times.
photo: NISt

july 2009 * iEEE SPEctrum * NA

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum July, 2009