An ARM spokesperson has blamed Flash and the abrupt emergence of tablets for the lack of smartbooks in the mobile marketplace.
“We thought [smartbooks] would be launched by now, but they’re not. I think one reason is to do with software maturity. We’ve seen things like Adobe slip — we’d originally scheduled for something like 2009,” ARM’s marketing vice president, Ian Drew told ZDNet UK.
“Our target is mostly Internet machines — it becomes sort of a requirement that they run the Internet. [The delay in optimizing] Flash has stalled it.”
Drew also explained that the sudden interest in tablets had “confused” certain manufacturers which had previously considered designing ARM-based smartbooks.
“I am disappointed that you can’t go down to PC World and buy a smartbook at the moment, but I’m convinced something will happen…Some of it is also related to there not being many Linux [netbooks] out there either…We’ve only got Linux,” said Drew.
“[Still], we now know what we didn’t know two years ago. It has taught us a lot about how we work with software companies.”
