What to expect in 2011?

1. Laptops - Sandy Bridge. In 2009 and 2010 Intel rolled out their Nehalem Intel processor microarchitecture which is better know as the i3, i5 and i7 processors. Nehalem brought biggest single jump in laptop performance we have seen, especially in terms of integrated graphics power and a reduction in power consumption bringing unprecedented battery life. In 2011, Intel will be releasing their Sandy Bridge microarchitecture which they promise will be the biggest leap in processing power they have made.   

2. Netbooks - Fusion. AMD Fusion is a new approach to processor design and software development, delivering powerful CPU and GPU capabilities for HD, 3D and data-intensive workloads in a single-die processor called an APU. In simple terms, you can expect by the end of 2011 every single netbook in the market will be able to handle high definition content. Think of it as Nehalem for the netbook. Battery life will be an improvement over the current generation of AMD low voltage CPU's but we expect it to fall short of Intel ATOM levels.

3. Smartphones -  Dual Core. More powerful dual core smartphones will better be able to support flash and bring more of a personal computer experience to your 3.7-inch screen and you can expect NVIDIA's Tegra to be the prominent player.

4. Tablets - Honeycomb - Apple will improve on its iPad with a dual core processor, camera's front and back and a few other improvements keeping it on top of the market. But Apple creates premium priced products and their market share is limited by their price. In the same way we saw Android smartphones shoot past Apple iPhone's, but the end of 2011, we expect the a who slew of Android tablets will have a bigger share of the market than the iPad. But do not expect iPad sales to go down. We simply expect the tablet market to increase in size with good lower cost options. Expect to see dual core processors too, just like the smartphones.

Wishing you all a happy new year.