The keyboard dock magnetic screen protector is awesome. But I’d like them to use the kick-stand and attach the thin keyboard dock like a Laptop in a way there’s a mouse pad that can be used. Archos has always innovated using Kick-stands, I hope they continue and I think using the kick-stand is the best way to make the thinnest, coolest ARM Powered Tablet/Laptop convertible. If possible the kick-stand angle can be adjustable. If you’re in an airplane and the space is limited, you don’t need to use the kick-stand, the tablet can rest against the seat that is in front of you. I think the keyboard should also fit behind the tablet when the keyboard does not need to be used. Preferably in a way so that the kick-stand can also still be used even when the keyboard dock is magnetically fixed behind the tablet.

Archos claims to have technology that makes G10 the thinnest tablet on the market. Something about patented paper-thin steel assembly technology. Archos has always been good at fitting huge battery capacity in extremely thin designs. I hope that Archos manages to make a deal with Pixel Qi and use the 10.1″ 1280×800 sunlight readable screen on this one. That’d provide for 20+ hours of battery life, sunlight readability, Kindle Reader competitiveness for reading and use for education and work, and it’d use much less power thus enabling a form factor and weight in the ultra-light class of 400-something grams for a 10″ tablet. Perhaps best to use Neonode’s IR touch technology instead of capacitive for least reflections and best readability.

For the processor on Archos G10, I think that one can expect either the OMAP4470 1.8Ghz Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 with SGX544 graphics or even the OMAP5430 which can also run upwards 1.8Ghz or more. It depends if Archos plans to release the G10 mid-year or by the end of the year.

I don’t know if Archos will continue to sell that 3G Stick solution in G10. Maybe there is a way to allow for a modem module of any of the 3G/4G/LTE types to be manually added by the user, under full warranty, in some slot on the back of the device without it having to be through a USB host port. Maybe the multi-mode wireless modems are now so cheap, can even be included on the same CPU dye, that maybe they just included it by default even on the cheapest G10 tablet and provide just an unlocked SIM card slot on the side.

Archos did mention making one Windows 8 on ARM based Tablet/Laptop convertible by the end of the year. I hope they make sure to make it dual-boot the latest and greatest Android also.

Archos Elements brings Google Certified tablets at as low as 100€/$100. My guess is that Archos Elements brings the Rockchip RK30 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 performance and higher capacitive screen resolutions than Arnova at extremely competitive pricing.

The new Arnova with Ice Cream Sandwich are going to be sold for as little as 50€/$50 at retail price!! My guess is 50€/$50 is the 7″ WVGA Dual-touch or single-touch resistive type with an RK2918 512MB RAM and Ice Cream Sandwich. It goes up to 150€/$150 retail price for what I think is probably the 9.7″ IPS capacitive RK2918 1GB RAM and Ice Cream Sandwich tablet. Basically with the new upcoming Arnova G3/G4 you get $49 basic alternative to the Kindle Fire and a $149 better-than-iPad1 tablet. Those are amazing low-priced targets for mass consumer retail Ice Cream Sandwich tablet pricing.

Archos is the top Android tablet seller in the major European markets, about equal to Samsung, in front of Asus, Acer, Motorola, Dell, LG, Toshiba and others. Archos CEO Henri Crohas sees a great opportunity to expand that lead with his company. Archos has announced a 32.9 Million € gross profit margin for 2011 on a yearly revenue of 171.4 Million €. They have announced an agreement to borrow upwards tens of millions of Euros more from one of the leading French banks Societe Generale (in exchange for stock guarantees, probably something similar to a capital increase, basically adding new stocks for cash to be used for the expansion) which Archos can use to further accelerate the mass production and mass distribution of their tablet series in the coming months.

You can discuss this post in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=63964

Sources:

• JBMM.fr
• ArchosLounge.net
• ArcTablet.com

Related articles:

• Archos Teases G10 XS Tablet With Ultra-Thin Steel Chassis (techcrunch.com)
• Archos will launch Gen10 premium tablets this year (liliputing.com)

Think about it for a second. Archos is a 250-employee company based in Paris, and they are the European leader for the sub-400€ tablet market, they are virtually tied with the Samsung tablet sales in Europe and they are far in front of giants like Asus, Acer, Motorola, Toshiba, LG, Huawei, ZTE, HTC tablet sales in Europe.

Archos revenue from US sales “only” increased 57% year/year from 18,2M to 28,6M, my theory is because Archos has to prioritize where to spend their cash for production and distribution. Just as the Samsung Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note were released in Europe and Asia before the USA, Archos also has to choose to prioritize shipments to the European and Asian market, some markets also where Archos may be able to extract larger margins and satisfy resellers more evenly (a US reseller constantly having to be out of stock gets angry..). Over the past 3-4 months, monitoring the forums at http://forum.archosfans.com one can see hundreds of messages of American consumers being somewhat dissapointed not being able to buy the latest Archos G9 series of tablets, and due to Texas Instruments OMAP4460 1.5Ghz Processor being delayed, Archos can only really start shipping that promised 1.5Ghz tablet speed since recently. Also to consider, Archos has yet to annonce a 3G/4G/LTE USB Stick carrier for the US market, as the US market isn’t compatible with the rest of the worlds open unlocked 3G/HSPA+ SIM card USB stick system (I do believe some carrier, at least an MVNO should soon be allowing Archos provide a USB stick compatible with their network).

Consider this, Archos is a 250-employee company, with currently their record yearly revenue at 171,4 Million Euros ($224.669 Million). Apple has 60400 employees and a 2011 revenue of $108.249 billion. That means Archos makes 481 times less revenue than Apple. Yet, Archos manages to be second largest tablet seller in Europe behind Apple and tied with Samsung.

My theory is that if/when a company like Archos can get access to more cash, they can increase the mass production of their products and I think Archos has no problems selling out of all of their inventory, pretty much regardless of the worldwide region.

The Android tablet market has exploded in 2011. I believe the daily Android tablets activations worldwide has now overtaken the iPad2. The regular stack of analysts will only demonstrate that when they estimate Q1 2012 tablet sales in early April. I base my estimation on the fact most major latest Android tablets were released not before December 2011 (Archos G9, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, Motorola XyBoard, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, etc), thus counting since December 2011 (and not October 2011 as the latest analysts have) positions Android tablets even more favorably against the iPad2.

With excellent value for money in Archos ICS-capable tablets, such as the $279 Archos 101 G9 Turbo 1.5Ghz, the $229 Arnova 9 G2, the Archos 70b Internet Tablet and the $149 Arnova 7b G2, all of them imminently fully running Ice Cream Sandwich, I believe Archos is well positioned to continue their growth in tablet market share. It’d be awesome to see Archos find the time to also provide an OMAP4460 1.5Ghz 7″ Kindle Fire killer (at around $249) and a 5″ Galaxy Note killer (at around $199) tablet with USB 3G/4G/LTE stick support as my favorite tablet sizes are 7″ jacket pocket sized and 5″ pants pocket sized.

Revenue for the fourth trimester 2011

Total revenue for 2011

Yearly revenue (Million €)

2009 : 57,9 ($76M)
2010 : 83,3 ($109.5M)
2011 : 171,4 ($224.7M)

Source: Archos Q4 2011 earnings press release on abcbourse.com and investir.fr

Some other specs:
- 4GB internal storage, expandable with microSDHC cards
- Dimensions: 195 mm x 118 mm x 14.1 mm
- Weight: 490 g
- WiFi, Bluetooth, micro USB 2.0 slave port, microSD slot, front facing camera, G-sensor, microphone, built-in speaker, GPS

Thus expect some Ice Cream Sandwich firmware updates for the cool devices like the $149 Arnova 7 G2, $179 Arnova 8 G2, the $199 Arnova 10 G2 and the recently announced Arnova 9 G2 likely to be sold below $249 with a 9.7″ capacitive IPS touch screen, thus bringing nice single-core Ice Cream Sandwich tablet experiences for the low-cost market.

Related articles

• Arnova 9 G2, 9.7″ capacitive IPS RK2918 Gingerbread tablet (archosfans.com)
• Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich source code released, how soon on every SoC? (armdevices.net)
• Rockchip Android 4.0 PAD Coming Soon: First Bite on Ice Cream Sandwich From Mainland China – the First Android 4.0 PAD in the World (prnewswire.com)
• Fuzhou Rockchip teases Android 4.0 PAD, brings Ice Cream Sandwich to the big screen (video) (engadget.com)

Source: arnovatech.com via: liliputing.com

The French Government is launching an offer to students in France to get an iPad2 or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for 1€ per day over a 2-year contract to get the tablet and 3G connectivity. That amounts to 730€. As a counter attack, Archos is suggesting that the Government support a French offer to French students, where the student can choose to get the Archos 80 G9 with 3G stick and with 3G access for half the price 0.50€ per day over 2 years, that amounts to only 365€. Given a choice with such huge price difference, obviously most students will choose the Archos tablet deal and not Samsung or Apple.

Archos is the only Tablet maker in France, and one of the only tablet makers based in Europe. The latest sales numbers for Tablet sales in France show that Archos is biggest Android tablet maker in terms of market share, in front of Samsung. They are of course second biggest tablet maker after Apple, for example last November and December months, Archos had 22% tablet market share in France and Apple had 68%. But that difference may get lowered quickly if the French Government accepts to support providing Archos tablets to all French students at a discounted price, half the price compared to the iPad2, all the while Archos providing a faster processor and far more features such as more video codecs supported, HDMI, 2x USB Hosts, Kick-stand (which makes it much more usable for education) an up to 50% faster processor and more.

Consider that Archos only has 100 employees, and Apple has 50 thousand (500x more). Consider that Archos has a market capitalisation of $200 Million on the Paris stock exchange while Apple is valued at $350 Billion on NASDAQ (1750x more). That Archos has about $40 Million cash to use for launching mass production while Apple has $70 Billion cash that they can use to launch as much mass production as they want (1750x more). And regardless of all that, it seems Archos may find a way in France to single handedly sell more tablets than Apple.

Archos G9 Turbo 1.2Ghz models start to be released by the end of October.

Archos G9 Turbo (Plus?) 1.5Ghz models start to be released by December.

Archos G9 1Ghz are being released right now.

It seems that there is still no confirmation if the Turbo tablets come with 1GB RAM or not. Price difference for Turbo seems to be to pay $30 more, which doubles ROM to 16GB and might also double RAM to 1GB.

You can discuss this in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=84&t=57335

video source: technicallyphilly.com

I first reported on the Arnova 10 G2 back in April when it was first announced. It is an awesome value device with a capacitive screen and the new Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex-A8 processor that can run at up to 1.2Ghz. It’s more powerful than the Apple A4 in the iPad1 and iPhone4, it’s more powerful than the Samsung Hummingbird processor in the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Samsung Galaxy S. Yet, the tablet is now being released named Arnova 10 G2 with a retail MSRP pricing probably between $199 and $229 (to be confirmed in the coming days).

Sure there has been some delays for this capacitive RK2918 tablet, I do not know why. Maybe Archos spent a few months selling the RK2818 tablets before ramping up production capacity and perhaps also having Rockchip try to have Honeycomb working on it. But more likely, Rockchip will try to use Ice Cream Sandwich directly for those, depending on the compatibility and ease of porting of that next version of open source Android with these ARM Cortex-A8 tablets released now.

This makes sense. The idea of the $99 10.1″ capacitive tablet is awesome. Here are some of my suggestions though for Philly to make this work in the most positive way:

- The $10/month subscription needs to include unlimited free access to all the worlds newspapers and not just the 2 newspapers. The economics are that people will not necessarily read more articles if they get access to more content.

You have to think big. I know it may be hard or impossible for the people of the Philly newspaper to reach out to all the other newspapers of the world and agree on some kind of Netflix-pricing to include full access to all the newspapers.

The idea is that you make it more attractive to more people inside and outside of your target market to want to subscribe to this idea. You write content in English. I think it makes no sense to limit yourself to a limited geography. You can write regional news in your current edition, but you can partner with all the other newspapers and let people read those other newspapers if they want.

Make the cake bigger together with others and your slice of the much bigger cake will be much bigger than your small cake.

Logically, the digital access subscription does not have to exclusively be consumed on that tablet. I guess that any other device can login and access that subscription plan. Simply build on your current Android app, and simply let it search and access the real format newspapers from all the other newspapers that you can partner with.

Here is Philly’s calculation and the customers options today:

- $199 or $229 is the unsubsidized Arnova 10 G2 price likely going to be when released within a few days from now.
- $99 with 2-year $10/month subscription = Total $339 for the Arnova 10 G2 with the 2-year digital newspaper access = $229 Tablet and $55/year digital subscription
- $129 with 1-year $13/month subscription = Total $285 for the Arnova 10 G2 with the 1-year digital newspaper access = $229 Tablet and $56/year digital subscription
- No tablet digital subscription price today = $3/week = $156/year
- No tablet normal paper newspaper by mail subscription price today = $7/week = $364/year

This can be a huge success for Archos and for newspapers but they have to continue on this plan and they need to pick up the phone and make some national and international agreements with all the other newspapers, join forces, subsidize Awesome ARM Powered Android Tablets to make people understand the value of technology and of the content.

Archos 80 G9:
8GB 1Ghz: $299
16GB 1.5Ghz: $329
250GB 1.5Ghz: $369

Archos 101 G9:
8GB 1Ghz: $369
16GB 1.5Ghz: $399
250GB 1.5Ghz: $469

For the confirmation if 8GB 1Ghz versions have 512MB RAM and 16GB and 250GB 1.5Ghz versions have 1GB RAM, you have to wait another few days or weeks for Archos to give us an official confirmation on the RAM capacity. As far as I understand, they may still be testing out the different types of RAM and capacities based on the latest Honeycomb 3.2 software most optimized for the high memory bandwidth of the OMAP4460 processor, to determine which type and capacity of RAM to use. Though these 1.5Ghz tablets are probably right now coming out of those factories so Archos should be able to confirm this at any moment now. Let’s try again tomorrow and the day after, when the engineers are not on their week-end break and can give us an answer.