Google Inc will launch a new version of its Nexus 7 tablet powered by Qualcomm Inc's Snapdragon processor around July, as the software giant pushes deeper into the cut-price mobile hardware market.
Google is aiming to ship as many as eight million of the Asustek-made tablets in the second half of the year, throwing down the gauntlet to other low-end tablets such as Amazon.com Inc's Kindle Fire and Apple Inc's iPad mini, the sources with knowledge of the new product said.
This is the first time details about the timing and sales targets for Google's new tablet have been unveiled, although the company has not publicly released any information.
Google, which gets almost all of its revenue from online advertising, wants the aggressively priced Nexus tablets to be a hit as more Nexus users would mean more exposure for Google's ads.
The latest version will have a higher screen resolution, a thinner bezel design and adopt Qualcomm's chip in place of Nvidia Corp's Tegra 3, which was used in the first Nexus 7s released last year, the sources said, declining to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
In a blow to Nvidia, Google weighed both U.S. chipmakers' processors but finally decided on Qualcomm's for power reasons, one of the sources added.
Qualcomm and Nvidia are competing aggressively in the tablet market as they seek to expand from their traditional strongholds of cellphones and PCs respectively.
A Google spokesman declined to comment on its new tablet. Qualcomm and Nvidia also declined to respond to questions.
Google and other traditionally non-hardware companies like Amazon and Microsoft Corp have begun making inroads into mobile devices as consumers increasingly access the Web on the go.
Google introduced its first tablet last June, hoping to replicate its smartphone success in a hotly contested market now dominated by Kindle Fire and iPad.
The Nexus 7 joined the ranks of smaller, 7-inch tablets popularized by Amazon and Samsung Electronics, among others.
Pricing is yet to be determined and Google's plans are fluid, the sources said. Market leader Apple is expected to launch new iPads this year as well, possibly forcing its competitors to change their assumptions.
Google may choose to sell the new gadget for $199, the same as the first generation rolled out last June, while the old model may be discounted, one of the sources said. Alternatively, the new tablet could be priced more competitively at $149 and the previous model discontinued, the source added.
The cheapest iPad mini goes for more than $300.
CORE STRENGTHS
Though pricing has not been finalized, discounting could play to Google's and Amazon's strengths by getting cheaper hardware into more consumers' hands to drive revenue from their core Internet-based businesses.
"This is the 'zero margin strategy'," said Fubon Securities analyst Arthur Liao. "Ninety-seven percent of Google's revenue comes from advertisement, so it needs to sell more mobile devices in order to reach more consumers."
The Internet search giant, which has never disclosed tablet sales, plans to ship six to eight million of the new Nexus 7s in the second half of this year, the sources said. That compares to an estimated 4.6 million Nexus 7s sold in the same period last year, according to Enders Analysis mobile industry analyst Benedict Evans.
The large volume could help to accelerate development of tablet-specific applications for its Android operating software.
Asustek, a netbook PC pioneer, will continue to co-brand with Google on the new Nexus 7. The Taiwanese company has said it aims to ship over 12 million tablets this year, almost double last year's shipments.
Day two of the Pwn2Own competition at CanSecWest was again successful for French Vupen security, as they succeeded in exploiting Adobe Flash on Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7 by chaining together three zero-days (an overflow, a ASLR bypass technique and a IE9 sandbox memory corruption) and earning themselves another $70,000.
Microsoft has weighed in, taking a cheap shot at its closest rival, by saying that “this type of tracking by Google is not new”. The Internet Explorer blog continued: “The novelty here is that Google apparently circumvented the privacy protections built into Apple’s Safari browser in a deliberate, and ultimately, successful fashion.”
“Unlike other major browsers, Apple’s Safari browser blocks third-party cookies by default. However, Safari enables many web features for its users that rely on third parties and third-party cookies, such as “Like” buttons. Last year, we began using this functionality to enable features for signed-in Google users on Safari who had opted to see personalized ads and other content — such as the ability to “+1” things that interest them.
To enable these features, we created a temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google’s servers, so that we could ascertain whether Safari users were also signed into Google, and had opted for this type of personalization. But we designed this so that the information passing between the user’s Safari browser and Google’s servers was anonymous — effectively creating a barrier between their personal information and the web content they browse.
However, the Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser. We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers. It’s important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.”
"It's not going to replace JavaScript," Bak said. "JavaScript is is a cornerstone of the Web today, and it will continue to be for a long, long time."Bak bristled at some of complaints about Google's approach to creating Dart in-house and not through a more collaborative approach.
"I don't buy the argument that before writing any line of code or designing any features, you put it in a standards committee, because that would just be a lot of screaming," Bak said. "You have to have coherent design before you start adopting Dart as a standard."Making a standard is a goal, though. "It will be fairly lonely to create a standards committee when here's only us in it. We first have to get the backing of other partners before we can make a standard that's useful," he said.
Dart's design goals are:Dart programs will be able to run within a Dart virtual machine--essentially a layer of software that acts as a computer to execute programs. They'll also be able to run using a compiler that translates Dart code into JavaScript code for browsers that don't support Dart, Bak said.
• Create a structured yet flexible language for Web programming.
• Make Dart feel familiar and natural to programmers and thus easy to learn.
• Ensure that Dart delivers high performance on all modern Web browsers and environments ranging from small handheld devices to server-side execution.
Dart targets a wide range of development scenarios: from a one-person project without much structure to a large-scale project needing formal types in the code to state programmer intent. To support this wide range of projects, Dart has optional types; this means you can start coding without types and add them later as needed. We believe Dart will be great for writing large web applications.
"Google has a lot fairly big Web applications. That includes Gmail and Docs. I hope many of these apps will be converted into Dart," Bak said--but cautioned that was his personal option, not an explicit plan.Introducing new programming languages is tough. Though many hope that computing can improve by reforming or replacing languages, the incumbent power of existing languages is strong. Educating thousands or millions of programmers, building developer tools, and creating supporting libraries of code all can take years. As newer languages such as Java, JavaScript, and C# attest, though, it is possible.
• Small scripts often evolve into large web applications with no apparent structure--they're hard to debug and difficult to maintain. In addition, these monolithic apps can't be split up so that different teams can work on them independently. It's difficult to be productive when a Web application gets large.The priority right now is to hear what the rest of the world thinks and to get them participating in Dart's development, Bak said.
• Scripting languages are popular because their lightweight nature makes it easy to write code quickly. Generally, the contracts with other parts of an application are conveyed in comments rather than in the language structure itself. As a result, it's difficult for someone other than the author to read and maintain a particular piece of code.
• With existing languages, the developer is forced to make a choice between static and dynamic languages. Traditional static languages require heavyweight toolchains and a coding style that can feel inflexible and overly constrained.
• Developers have not been able to create homogeneous systems that encompass both client and server, except for a few cases such as Node.js and Google Web Toolkit (GWT).
• Different languages and formats entail context switches that are cumbersome and add complexity to the coding process.
"At this point it is mostly the language we are focused on," he said. "We hope to get positive feedback on the language."
"Getting directions is one of the most popular features on Google Maps, whether it be for driving, walking, biking or transit," Paul Yang, a Google Maps engineer, wrote.The feature is now available to all users, but you need the Earth view plugin to make use of it. Enabling the feature is easy. Just plan out a route, like usual.
"Today, we are launching a new feature that allows you to bring your upcoming trip to life, by allowing you to preview your route in 3D," he announced.
