By March 20, 2011

Archos high end devices to be announced in June

archos-logo-09An old favourite for many when it comes to personal media players is the name Archos. Whilst the more recent tablet offerings have had mixed reviews it looks like their efforts in the last year have paid off and they have posted a rather tidy profit from the latest generation. With profits of around up from 13.5% to 23.3% it looks like they are doing something right.

What’s next for the little French company? Well, Global domination it seems. Their legacy is primarily high quality audio/video experiences and in the last few years this has changed to cater for cost effective Android tablet experiences. So why not combine them and come up with high quality Android Tablets?

If done right, the following will just be amazing:

ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core 1.6Ghz, it’s the fastest processor in a tablet ever unveiled thus far. I expect this to be a customized Texas Instruments OMAP4440, but that is only because I guess Archos will continue their long time partnership with TI that they’ve had for over 10 years now.

New innovative 3G modem. Yup, we’re getting 3G (at least as an option). What kind of 3G? How they implement it? I dunno, it seems they have a new special way of doing it? I hope they do it with some kind of modem module that can be added or swaped, thus making the tablet compatible with all types of cellular networks current and future and making production and distribution easy, anyone think it could be a module? Somehow allowing for space for a standard USB 3G modem on an “internal” USB host could also be a very innovative way to simply add 3G to the devices, the back of the device could “simply” have some space available to insert any standard compact 3G modem such as the Huawei or ZTE 3G usb dongles that anyone can buy everywhere for as little as $20 unlocked.

6 sizes from 5? to 10?. That’s the sizes it seems they are aiming at. It might mean Archos noticed their 7? and 10? Gen8 were much more popular and in demand than the smaller sizes, and it might mean Archos is realizing a tablet has to be at least 5?, perhaps they leave the smaller sizes to the Arnova line? I expect/hope all are capacitive, even the 5? one. Likely sizes are 5?, 7?, 10.1?, other possible sizes (since there are 6 sizes planned), 9.7? 4:3 aspect ratio, 5.8?, 8.9?, 8? 4:3 aspect ratio. I also hope Archos and Pixel Qi can synchronize release schedules so Archos can provide Pixel Qi matte capacitive screen option on all these sizes, at least as an option. Would you pay $50/$100 extra for Pixel Qi if Pixel Qi is not yet fully mass produced? One can hope Pixel Qi is fully mass produced in time, and that somehow Archos sees the opportunity in using it accross the line, thus making Gen9 ready for productivity, ready for real reading, ready for outdoor use, ready for use in professional and study situations, ready for serious collaboration on text annotations, ready to be Kindle-killer and iPad-killer all at the same time.

All are Android, obviously it has to be Honeycomb (source code for Honeycomb has yet to be released in the open by Google, it should be done any day now), can Google finally open up Android and allow value Archos tablets the full Google Marketplace access? I would expect so, that could hopefully allow Archos to be certified. (this is totally up to Google is my guess)

Archos says they continue to focus on aiming for the medium range pricing. My guess is it likely stays below $300, but if they do 3G, Pixel Qi and if they are first out with OMAP4440, who knows, perhaps the price might sneak up to something below $400. Archos CEO is planning all this based on offering the best possible value they can, my guess is that they aim to stay below $300 for the basic models.

They continue to make hard drive versions. Reason being hard drives provide much more storage at much lower cost. My expectation is at least some of the 6 sizes will have hard drive options. Capacity can depend on how thick they can accept that hard drive to be, cause 2.5? hard drives can go up to 1TB as far as I know, but those are probably too fat. So 250GB for sure, 320GB and 500GB again maybe, if the 320GB or/and 500GB are available in super slim mode.

Well that’s all they have teased for us for now. What other features are you hoping Archos is preparing for us in the Gen9 tablets? write in the comments. You can also comment in the forum:http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=43708&p=337531#p337531

Sources: http://www.bestofmicro.com/actualite/28876-Tablette-Android.html,http://www.archos.com/corporate/investors/financial_doc/ARCHOS_2010_Results_en.pdf

Posted by: Gareth

Posted in: News

About the Author:

Seasoned tech blogger. Host of the Tech Addicts podcast.
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