New-Tech Europe Magazine | July 2016 | Digital edition

system for the web. Android apps build of top of that foundation to provide additional functionality across productivity, entertainment, games, social and messaging. With the addition of Android, Chrome is now on par with other operating systems, erasing the features gap with traditional laptop operating systems. With Google Play, Chromebooks get one of the fastest growing, mobile- first app ecosystems in the world. In short, consumers will soon begin to engage with big-screen devices in ways that echo the satisfying and productive experiences they have enjoyed on their smartphones. For developers, the availability of Android apps on Chromebooks creates new markets. It will open new vistas for developers to push their apps into the large-screen form factor and to develop new sets of apps and use cases that leverage newer form factors and system performance. The scalability opportunity is clear. Microsoft, for example, is supporting Office productivity suites on Android. System design implications Android apps on Chromebooks will significantly influence form factor design. OEMs, therefore, should consider how: • Convertible form factors and Android apps deliver a full tablet experience in a clamshell device. • The convertible form-factor encourages users to hold the device much more than traditional clamshell, which makes the materials much more prominent and important to the experience and to design considerations. • Weight and thickness determine whether the user is using the device in a tablet mode and therefore getting the full potential of Android. • Keyboard and mouse input will

influence consumers’ use cases.

Software and hardware entrepreneurs around the world have extended the Android smart phone and apps ecosystem into productive and clever new applications in a variety of industries, from construction to industrial, entertainment, mining and medical, education and the physical sciences. In short, there is arguably not a single industry that hasn’t benefitted from this innovation. Indeed, this ecosystem, coalescing around the Android operating system and the ARM architecture, has created profound change: • In 2009, 180 million smart phones shipped; today we’re shipping 1.5 billionsmart phones annually. • The related silicon revenue is $26 billion annually. • On the software side, more than 1.5 million apps have been developed. • In the first quarter of 2016 alone, consumers downloaded 11 billion items from the Google Play store. New era dawns This mobile ecosystem, echoing 2009, is now fundamentally influencing large-screen compute, including Chromebooks. Soon, users will enjoy Android apps on Chromebook, bringing the mobile experience, the diversity and innovation of the Android ecosystem and ARM technology to large-screen devices. This is occurring in part because consumers now demand more of their smart phone “mobile" experience on those large-screen devices - experiences including the ones mentioned above (long battery life, rich graphics and media content, widespread apps availability and so forth). The ARM ecosystem will help deliver technology to enable that. Since their introduction in 2011, Chromebooks have set a foundation of speed, simplicity, security and shareability, and Chrome has established itself as the best operating

ARM has worked closely with its partners to deliver compelling designs on Android devices—thin, sleek devices that offer long battery life and compelling performance such as: • Game console-quality graphics performance on 2.5K and 4K resolution screens. • Support for 4K video content. • Support for multiple camera sensors with resolutions and frame rates more typical of a digital SLR. Performance gains What can OEMs expect on the performance front? If the history of mobile innovation is any guide (and it is), they can expect a lot. Stretching back to the dawn of the Android smartphone era in 2009, with the first single-core ARM Cortex-A8-powered device, CPU performance-per core has jumped 15x since then, while multicore performance has soared 49x. These types of technical benefits have helped the software ecosystem flourish in the past decade, making ARM ubiquitous with Android, to the point where • 97% of all games are ARM native. • 40% of top 100 apps games are ARM native only. • 89% apps & games target the ARM architecture. This success is tied to Android apps running natively on ARM. As the smart phone industry started to ramp, it was only natural for Android developers to write to the hardware that was powering the smartphone revolution. As the market opportunity exploded, other architecture companies wanted to exploit the market growth. Native advantage: ARM But for other architectures to try to be competitive, they have had to

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