For our recent trends analysis, I researched the number and origin of wireless patent applications in both the US and China. I decided to take that data a little further, and take a closer look at the general patent filing trends for China. 

Using updated statistics only recently released by SIPO, the Chinese patent office, I discovered that, astonishingly, the number of Chinese patent applications grew at a rate of 24% over the prior year, an impressive rate not seen in China since 2005. In absolute terms, it looks like it was the single largest year-over-year increase in patent applications ever, in the world. 

We have long known that SIPO was on track to become the world’s largest patent office. As early as 2008, we could have predicted that 2010 would be the year that SIPO took over the Japanese patent office for the #2 spot, and this appears to be the case. This new data shows, however, that 2011 could actually be the year that SIPO leapfrogs the USPTO to take the #1 spot for itself. 

If SIPO maintains anything like its past growth rates, this is a real possibility. A lot will depend on the USPTO’s numbers, due out in the spring. 

All this begs the question, however: how are companies going to leverage their Chinese patent portfolios? 

Tablets are, predictably, all the rage at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year. We’ve had the opportunity to teardown several of the most popular tablets to date, including the Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. This area is growing and developing even faster than the smartphone market, and it shows no sign of slowing down.

NVIDIA Tegra and Samsung Orion processors are leading the mobile processor field to date. These devices are quickly building an early lead, and many tablet developers not utilizing these standard chipsets will quickly find themselves at a serious disadvantage to their competitors.

On the operating system front, Apple iOS and Google Android are quickly dominating the market in the high-end and low-end tablet markets, respectively. Meanwhile, Nokia has effectively abandoned its MeeGo offering in favour of Microsoft’s Windows 7, and RIM is expected to delay release of the Playbook until April. This only gives iOS and Android more time to build their lead, making them early favorites in this race.

We've posted a bunch of our most recent tablet teardown content on our new trends page. Let us know what you think!

--Allan Yogasingam, Technical Marketing Manager

Solid state storage will replace hard disk drives in almost all high-end (>$1000) laptops

A combination of NAND Flash process technology improvements and advanced packaging has allowed more memory to fit into smaller spaces.  SSD manufacturers are also starting to get away from traditional hard drive form factors as evidenced by the Toshiba Blade X-gale SSD found in the MacBook Air and the recent announcement of Intel’s miniature 80GB SSD.  Solid state storage already provides storage for high-end smart phones and tablets, and I expect more design wins in the laptop/notebook space.

Rise of the dual-core mobile processor

As Bob mentioned, the nVidia Tegra 2 attracted a lot of attention at CES this year.  It will not be the only dual-core mobile processor to come out in a mobile application this year.  We are expecting to see Samsung’s first dual-core applications processor to show up in a high end Samsung smart phone or tablet.  Also, Qualcomm continues to pack more processing power into their baseband processors with the arrival of the dual-core Snapdragons. 

Now the question is the same as for multi-core processors on the PC and server side—will the software/operating systems be able to use the full functionality of the two cores?  Android 3.0 (code named Honeycomb) brings promise of better core utilization.  Multiple “Honeycomb” dual-core tablets were introduced at CES from major players such as Motorola, LG, and Toshiba.  Google did debunk the myth that Honeycomb will ONLY work on dual-cores—it is just optimized to do so.  I expect to see more dual-core processors in smart phones and tablets this year.

--Steve Bitton, Product Manager at UBM TechInsights

Our final two forecasts for 2011 come from our product managers. Jason Abt shares his thoughts on tablet design in the coming year.

Jason Abt

There's been lots of interest of course in the processor design wins in the mobile space, but there are some associated design decisions that are going to be just as interesting for me. The intense focus on mobile products over the years have been pushing the envelope for both size and power. We’ve seen many methods of reducing the footprint and height of packages – die thinning and stacking, process shrinks, package-on-package to name a few. We’ve also seen plenty of attention paid to power consumption.

We will undoubtedly see continued progress in these areas, with consumers demanding longer battery life and more capability from their mobile devices.  We will soon see mainstream use of Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) to provide ever more complex chip-to-chip connectivity. We will see the demand for faster and faster memory access speeds from relatively heavy duty operating systems running on big, multi-core processors.

But to me, tablets are a category-buster, that might – in some regards – buck the trend.

Many would argue that current tablets are really just smart phones in a bigger package. At least from the user perspective.  But what about on the inside?  Suddenly, system designers have much more area to play with compared to a phone. Why not take advantage of that?

As we see more tablets from more manufacturers, I’m expecting to see some interesting cost-cutting measures on the design side vs. equivalent smart phones.  Why incur the added cost of using package-on-package for your processor and DRAM (and likely costly LPDDR2) when you can use a standard package and standalone DDR2? Do you really need a super-thin 8-die stack of Flash crammed into one package? You’ve got the space - why not use it?

As long as the user experience doesn’t suffer (and sure you could argue about power consumption) I think tablet makers – notably those with equivalent smart phones – will be jumping at the opportunity.  Especially if consumers are willing to pay as much – or even more – for a super-sized version of what arguably does the same thing.

Tablets, Tablets, Tablets...

Bob Widenhofer, Senior Analyst for UBM TechInsights, thinks tablets will feature prominently in 2011. Here's his take:

I think that I'd pay a little more for a 7-inch tablet than I would for a dedicated book reader of similar screen quality.  This makes the Samsung Galaxy Tab a contender in my books. I think it'll still be around next year because it beat the flood of Android-based tablets to market, and did so with a 1GHz processor, decent cameras, 3G + WiFi connectivity, and a decent display to boot.

In the larger-screen category, I'm intrigued by the 10-inch tablets with Nvidia Tegra-2 dual-core processors.  In particular, the as-yet-unnamed 10.1" entry from Toshiba has my attention.  Toshiba laptops have a fine track record for balancing quality, performance, and price. I own a couple myself. The retail price has not been announced, but if it's less expensive than an iPad, I think this one will succeed.  If not, there are some down-market entries with similar specs (MSI, Foxconn) that I think will grab a niche market in the ~$400 range.  It seems certain that the Tegra-2 processor will gain traction somewhere in this market.

I don't think we'll see Windows 7 tablets with 10-inch displays doing well.  This seems an awful lot like a netbook with a touchscreen instead of a keyboard.  Any unit of this type at a price point above $450 is, in my opinion, unlikely to thrive in 2011.