I recently returned from a trip to Taiwan and Japan.  This trip followed up on our announcement with Intel at their SFO IDF.

I visited new customers and old ones and the message is the same.  They want to look different, they want to be in control of their own products, they want to have something better.

I have been hearing this for a long time now.  One of our oldest customers is Toshiba (9 years now) and Toshiba is a major licensee of Microsoft Windows for laptop PCs.  The main gripe that Toshiba has with Microsoft Windows is that it is impossible for them to differentiate themselves from their competitors such as HP and Dell.

With the coming of Android, the story is set to repeat itself.  Dozens of Android phones will come onto the market and they will look very similar to one another.

This is one of the main selling points of FancyPants.  It can be used to create a unique look and feel and layout.  It can be integrated with existing platforms such as Moblin, LiMo and Android (email me to ask how).

We like to say it gives products that “Wow Factor”, but then, you will have to decide for yourself.

Recently Nigel Clifford, Symbian CEO Nokia employee, had a few words to say about Linux in the mobile phone space.  Its quite funny to read about the benefits of open source and the evils of industry fragmentation from one who epitomised the proprietary closed source solution until (checks watch) recently.

The thing is, though, I’m not quite sure what the long term Nokia-Symbian-Trolltech love triangle is all about.

One twisted theory I’ve heard (ok, I admit its mine) is that Nokia will prop Symbian up as a crippled option for its competitors, never quite good enough for a real modern day smartphone and never quite supported properly.  Slowly Nokia will use Symbian less and less for its own purposes while it rolls out more and more Linux phones.

In other words, maybe Nokia is trying to kill competition through poor alternatives and sheer frustration.  Far fetched?  Perhaps.

Another theory is that Linux will become the vehicle for Nokia’s higher end, more general purpose computing devices and Symbian for the lower end, soon-to-be-at-the-end-of-lifetime devices.

Either way I’m not buying any Symbian shares.

Its been a long time between watering holes, as they say.  And a very busy time for us.  We’ve come back to Mobile Internet Devices.

FST announced support for Intel’s new Atom processor last night:

http://www.fst.net/resources/press/pr.20080820.0.html

As the only UI Innovator (their term,  but I don’t mind) in the MID ecosystem we enjoy the attention of the companies really wanting to create something different.

The MID stands to be a new way of working with our surroundings and each other.  I’m sure you have all seen the video:

http://moblin.org/ItsYourMoveNext_video.php

There is still a lot of stuff to work out, much of it infrastructure – by which I mean connectivity, services, fees, awareness and education, just to name a few, but its a step in the right direction.  A far cry from the first Ericsson seminar I went to where they talked about “Always On”, the marketing term for GPRS.

The user interface, of course, is one of the most crucial aspects.  Its not about looking good, although that always helps, but its about being easy to use, providing visual cues, and being responsive.

For us this is the start of an exciting time.  With Intel getting more and more into the traditional embedded space, there will be a lot of competition, but also a lot of opening up of what has traditionally been closed markets for software vendors.  Intel is like the proverbial Bull in the China Shop and will eventually level out the field somewhat.

As long as people are paying attention to the user interface on these kinds of devices we at FST are happy.  Thanks Intel.

Some more photos of the new Intel Menlow based Toshiba UMPC with FancyPants GUI.

Cool colors, stylish backing. We could make a GUI theme to match you know.