Netbook Platform Vendor Matrix

The Netbook Platform Vendor Matrix is part of a group of vendor matrices for UMDs — one for UMPCs, one for netbooks, and one for MIDs. The same criteria for platform vendors and the same scores for that criteria are used for all three, but the weighting of the criteria will be different for each type of UMD.

ABI Research will continually evaluate the weighting of criteria as each changes in importance and will add new criteria when necessary.

- Design wins announced. This is based on the number of a company’s design wins combined with the significance of each win. Higher profile design wins will carry more weight since they will usually lead to more shipments.

- Experience with CE and mobile device vendors. This reflects a company's existing relationships with consumer electronics and mobile device vendors, which would help platform vendors gain design wins for UMDs with these types of companies.

- Experience with PC vendors. This reflects a company's existing relationships with PC vendors, which would help platform vendors gain design wins for UMDs with these types of companies.

- Support of all PC OS. This reflects the platform vendor's ability to support all full PC OS, which would be dictated by whether or not they produce an x86-based platform.

- Support of all lower level OS. This reflects the platform vendor's ability to support all lower level OS, dictated by whether or not it produces an ARM-based platform.

- Early-to-market with solution. This refers to the company's timing of entry into the market.

- Flexibility of solution/design. This relates to the rigidity of the platform and reference design. A more flexible solution allows for substitution of most parts of the design with similar parts. A less flexible solution might be well integrated but does not allow for customization.

- Bundling of WWAN, WPAN, and GPS. This refers to whether the platform solution includes connectivity solutions.

- x86 or Cortex A-8 processor or higher. This refers to whether the platform is based on an x86 processor or Cortex A-8 or higher. ARM11 and lower processors are not as competitive in terms of performance.

- Support for 720p HD video. This reflects the solution's ability to support 720p HD video or higher, which will be in increasing demand for the display of multimedia.

Rankings



After individual scores are established for Innovation and Implementation using the above criteria, an overall company score is established using the Root Mean Square (RMS) method:




The resulting overall scores are then ranked and used for percentile comparisons.

The RMS method, in comparison with a straight summation or average of individual innovation and implementation values, rewards companies for standout performance.

For example, using this method a company with an innovation score of 9 and an implementation score of 1 would score considerably higher than a company with a score of 5 in both areas, despite the mean score being the same. ABI Research believes this is appropriate as the goal of these matrices is to highlight those companies that stand out from the others.