In a TGDaily interview with Intel's vice president and general manager of their Mobile Platforms Group, Mooly Eden, we learn more about Intel's MID versus UMPC strategy:
TG Daily: We have been wondering at TG Daily, is the MID what the UMPC should’ve been in the first place?
Mooly Eden: I believe all of it was evangelism. We look at new opportunities as we learned, as we looked at it. When we start developing this stuff, and a lot of it, by the way, is the same, we’ll find out that, when we start talking about UMPC [ultra-mobile PC], the market is not huge. But we thought it was a market we needed to serve.
When we started working with it and we went to the customer, we discovered that there’s a huge opportunity: The MID – with IA-32, very low power, carry-on-you, etcetera, etcetera. We learned that this market is bigger, but learning is part of the crusade. Before you start walking you don’t know it. I believe we have started walking now.
Do you agree? I don't. I think he's talking about the current implementations not being as good as what a large number of people would like. The same truth is going to hit the MID market. You can't just squish a browser into a MID device and call it good---or better. That's not the secret sauce.
And to believe the a Linux distro can step, be modified to be more mobile friendly, whereas Windows can't, I think isn't right either. Maybe Microsoft doesn't want to fix Windows proper. That may be. However, there's no doubt in my mind that as a consumer I'd pick a Windows platform over a Linux one assuming they both have a rich user experience. Take away a good user experience in one platform and not the other, then that settles it--I'd pick the better user experience. I just don't buy the argument that any OS can't be structured to provide a good mobile experience.
The platform from Intel is critical. It needs to provide a strong base. Given that, the software is an extremely critical component. Is it extensible? Does it have a active ecosystem that I can go to as a developer to seek help when needed? Does it "scale" in the sense that things I do today will be easily adaptable to tomorrow's hardware and OS? These are the things I think of. Linux per se isn't going to be the answer--no more so that Windows was going to be for the UMPC. As a consumer I want to see a good user experience. Will developers of Ubuntu deliver? I don't know. That's the key. That's what was missing in Intel's presentations. It's not just a matter of the form factor with some OS placed on top.


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