Many, many column inches have been expended on the New iPad 3 - and many, many electrons have been inconvenienced so that we have been able to read the comments and reviews of the new Apple giga-tablet on the interweb. And, of course, we none of us question that it is a very fine gadget indeed.
But on the other side of the world the very much more humble AllWinner has also been launched - to almost no fanfare whatsoever. It's a system on a chip (SoC) similar to the one at the heart of the iPad, but slower at 1.2GHz or less and with only one core rather than the iPad's two. So what's special then?
$7
That's what's special. That's the volume price. Of course, someone has to build the rest of the tablet to fit around this basic chip.
The implications for bringing computing power to the millions are huge. Millions in the developing world, as well as to us.
This little beast, based on the tablet-standard ARM architecture, will run the new Android version 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich or ICS) and power an HDMI output. It is faster than many of the laptop processors we are using today.
Also, it's already available in several quite humble-looking tablets.
I'm going to stick my neck out and predict that this will outsell the iPad. And change our world in ways we have yet to imagine.
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