Earlier this week, Michael Arrington from major tech blog TechCrunch revealed a prototype of an Internet tablet his team was working on. The 12-inch touchscreen Internet device runs on minimal hardware and Linux but comes with WiFi and a webcam and is supposedly affordable – they were initially aiming for a price tag of US$200 (S$300), but it seems US$299 is a more realistic estimate. By comparison, the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet costs $768.
What piqued my interest though, is that Fusion Garage, a little known startup from Singapore, has been working on the software for the device. A visit to their site revealed little of what the startup is about. But I managed to get in touch with Fusion Garage’s founder and chief executive, Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, to find out more on what they’re working on.
Fusion Garage has been working on a browser-based operating system (OS) for close to a year. It will run on Linux and use Webkit as the rendering engine for its browser.
(Note: Webkit is the rendering engine that runs on the web browsers of the iPhone, Nokia’s smartphones, the Android G1 and Palm’s upcoming Pre.)
They can’t reveal much about the collaboration with TechCrunch apart from what’s been made public.
All I can say now is that it does look very promising and quite polished, from the video that TechCrunch has on their site, even though the software’s still very early in development. And I think the Fusion Garage OS, for lack of a better name, might have a market in netbooks, kiosks, appliances and simple Internet-based devices.
I find the small screen sizes for netbooks impractical and manufacturers have responded somewhat – if you’ve been looking at the new crop of netbooks, you’ll notice that screen sizes are a lot more generous.
To me, an affordable and minimal web tablet certainly seems a lot more desirable than a netbook with a smallish screen. Maybe that’s why circulating rumours about an Apple tablet seemed to get a bit of traction.
In other words, I want one.
UPDATE: I thought it was worth adding my reply to Benjamin’s comment. Here it is:
For me, a dedicated hardware-based web browser lowers the entry barrier for accessing the Internet drastically because one doesn’t necessarily need to fiddle with the complexities that come with learning how to use a computer or a mobile phone to access the Web.
I’ve seen old folks, children and the less fortunate in third world countries give up learning to use the Internet because of the learning curve associated with a computer – interfacing with the web directly via a touchscreen tablet would mean one less obstacle for them too.
Also, I’ve yet to see a device on the market that simplifies web access as much as possible either. It could very well turn out to be a blue ocean that’s waiting to be tapped.
Tags: Fusion Garage, Singapore, startup, TechCrunch
