Evermore Mobile Internet Devices at CES 2009

Before Intel Developer Forums and some of the bigger consumer electronics shows, I always try to catch up with Ultra Mobility man Uday Keshvadas to see what new gadgets he’s packin’ up.

Just before the holidays as he was gearing up for the Consumer Electronics Show, Uday showed me his team’s latest collection of Mobile Internet Devices, each powered by a tiny, mighty Intel Atom processor.

Uday’s collection keeps growing. There’s the Panasonic tough and ready Ultra Mobile PC that can take an industrial licking and keep working for up to nine hours on one battery charge.

The Sharp Willcom unit looks pretty cool, available in Japan running the Vista operating system.

The small, convertible mobile PC by Fujitsu built for power business people who like staying tapped into their corporate networks while on the go.

Both of my brother-in-laws’ birthdays are coming up, so I’m trying to persuade the family to get each of them a BenQ device which operates on Italy’s TIM network.

Uday showed devices that are available today in France, Taiwan, Korea, the Lenovo IdeaPad for China decorated for and used during the Beijing Olympics, and the Clarion MIND — Mobile Internet Navigation Device — available in the U.S.

Steve “Chippy” Paine from UMPCPortal.com spoke with Intel’s Pankaj Kedia last week about progress with with Intel Atom since it hit the market eight months ago. Here’s an excerpt from Intel hints at CES product lunches. Remains confident about MID market:

> “The ‘journey continues’ says Pankaj, referring to the progress made in the MID market this year and the steps that will be taken to further it in 2009. About 15 Menlow based devices were launched. There are 13 Moblin distribution partners ranging from Novell to Canonical. 3 of these distributors (Canonical, Asianux and WindRiver) are working on Moblin. There are over 7000 developers are involved in the Moblin ecosystem. That’s not bad for year one although many of us in the western world are still asking where the devices are! Distribution for the 15 devices remains tight with many western countries not having direct access at all to a Menlow based device.”

We’ll see how people pick and choose between new MIDs and Netbooks as both new consumer device categories seem poised to make a splash at CES.