Market research firm Gartner estimates that total sales of tablet PCs over the last 12 months tally up at close to 65 million, and predicts that this likely to rise to 320 million units being shipped annually by 2015. A series of 'fire sales' have catalysed consumer interest - the HP TouchPad famously starting this trend, with products from other leading manufacturers, such as the Blackberry Playbook and Motorola Xoom following suit more recently. It has been encouraged still further by lower price tag offerings entering the market, like the Amazon Kindle-Fire. Ian Dunn of Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) gives his appraisal of the situation.
Tablets merge the functionality of laptop/desktop PCs with the mobility and convenience found in feature/smartphones. However, the potential that the tablet format offers will never be fully realised unless applications developed for it take this mobility aspect into account, rather than simply sticking to the conventional tasks that fixed/semi-portable PCs are associated with. As tablets can be used on the move they can be brought into a variety of different environments and in principle offer the opportunity to interact with many forms of external hardware.
Typically any application being developed will connect to hardware via a set of drivers. This causes difficulties with Android based tablets, however, as tablet manufacturers will generally lock the operating system to prevent customisation from being done.
The introduction of the Android Open Accessory initiative, a few months ago, has huge implications for the progression of the tablet industry. It makes it considerably easier to transfer data to/from Android based tablets via USB - so that these products can interface with external system hardware such as accelerometers, actuators, motor drives, light sensors, temperature sensors, electromechanical relays, etc. When in Open Accessory mode, the tablet behaves as the USB device and the external hardware it connects with becomes the USB host (providing the power and carrying out enumeration process).
By supporting the Android Open Accessory initiative, installation of extra drivers on the Android device is not required - avoiding the need for complicated rooting to be carried out. This means that engineering resources do not have to be committed to developing these drivers. Each Open Accessory mode USB host has a set of string descriptors that the Android operating system is capable of reading when it is connected to the Android hardware. These strings will match an application on the Android operating system. The strings are then used to auto start the application on the Android device when the external hardware is connected.
The Android Open Accessory initiative will enable professional engineers and keen amateurs to develop an assortment of applications that go far beyond those of traditional PCs. In essence it allows them to connect to the mobility ecosystem that the tablet segment is helping to promote. By making the operating system accessible, creativity can be encouraged.
www.ftdichip.com/Android
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