If you’ve got a car and a bicycle, do you need a motorcycle too? Wireless carriers are betting that you do. They’re making a big push this year for the motorcycles of the gadget world: devices that are bigger than a phone but smaller than a laptop.
The most famous entrant in the category is Apple Inc.’s iPad, which comes out next month. But many other manufacturers are crowding into the niche, and were planning to do so even before Apple’s announcement in January.
Some of them are making keyboard-less “tablet” computers in the vein of the iPad. Others are making small laptop-like things known as “smartbooks” that will sell for a few hundred dollars [although a German company claims it owns the rights to the name “smartbook” and is trying to prohibit others from using the term].
Hewlett-Packard Co. showed its first smartbook this week in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest cell phone trade show. At first glance, HP’s Compaq AirLife 100 looks just like a netbook — a small laptop — but the inner workings are quite different.
Rather than using Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software, the smartbook runs Android, which Google Inc. created for mobile devices and gives away for free. Rather than using a computer processor from Intel Corp. or Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the AirLife uses a chip from Qualcomm Inc. that has cell phone heritage.
The AirLife works somewhat like a cell phone as well: It’s ready to use as soon as you flip the lid open. Like a phone, it receives your e-mail even when it’s in standby mode with the lid closed. Because the Qualcomm chip uses a lot less power than a PC chip, HP says the AirLife can be used for 12 hours between charging.
Smartbooks are like cell phones in another way: Wireless…