Quebec-designed tablet to give iPad a run for its money

MONTREAL – If the reviews hold true, the Quebec-designed ExoPC will give Apple’s iPad a run for its money.

Shan Ahdoot, the CEO of ExoPC, based in Rimouski and St. Laurent, showed off a prototype of the 11-inch tablet at his office, in the former Nortel Networks building on the Trans-Canada Highway Tuesday.

ExoPC, a subsidiary of St. Laurent-based Groupe Hypertec, has designed software to power touch screen computers, and is now in the process of seeking partners that will build tablets with that software. Much like Google’s Android is an operating system for cellular phone manufacturers, ExoPC is a user interface layered over a Windows 7 operating system to be used on tablets.

Ahdoot said the strategy is to build partnerships with original equipment manufacturers to sell the device on a worldwide scale. He hopes that will attract developers to design programs for the ExoPC app store, a vital selling point when going up against the iPad and Apple’s app store.

"Working with partners around the world will allow us to gain that critical mass so we can build an ecosystem," he said.

Ahdoot said software programmers have free access to the ExoPC development kit, and it’s easy to adapt mobile applications to work in the ExoPC environment. The ExoPC application store is expected to have 1,000 programs available by the end of the year. The company’s design office in Rimouski will test every application.

ExoPC is one of the first touch-screen user interfaces designed to work in the Windows 7 environment. This will allow hardware companies to build tablet PCs that can rival the iPad, because while Google’s Android can be used for tablets, it’s not robust enough to work on anything wider than seven inches.

In Canada, Ciara Tech, a division of Groupe Hypertec, will outsource manufacturing of the tablet to factories in Taiwan. The tablet will be sold in Canada as the Vibe powered by ExoPC, and will be in stores by the end of the year, Ahdoot said. In Europe, it will be known as MOBI-1 powered by ExoPC, through a partnership with the Portuguese company Probitas. An American partnership will be announced by January.

While there have been some delays in shipping pre-ordered tablets, Ahdoot said the company has 1,100 orders in 34 countries, and will start shipping them next week.

ExoPC has already received good reviews from technology websites like Engadget and LAPTOP Mag.

The demonstration unit Ahdoot had in his office yesterday showed impressive speed. The operating system was smooth, and applications such as Microsoft PowerPoint launched in about a second: quicker than many iPad applications, and certainly faster than a laptop.

Ahdoot explained the processor is more powerful than that of the iPad, and it has flash memory, rather than a hard drive, which makes it run faster than some laptops.

The Vibe will have 2GB of RAM, a processing speed of 1.66 GHz, and either 32GB or 64GB of storage. It is powered by an Intel Atom N450 processor, and claims four hours of battery life. It includes a front-facing webcam, and several ports, including an SD card reader and two USB ports. The Wi-Fi edition will sell in Canada for $649 for the 32 GB model, and $749 for the 64GB model. The 3G models sell for $779 and $879. By comparison, Apple’s iPad is 9.7 inches wide, runs on a 1 GHz processor, has no USB ports or card readers, is not fully HD and has no webcam, but has a battery life of about 10 hours. The iPad, at 1.6 pounds, is also a half pound lighter. Unlike the iPad, the ExoPC is compatible with Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.

Ahdoot said the company is also working on adapting the software for airplane video screens, car dashboards and eventually for mobile phones, where it will be pitted against both Google’s Android phones and Apple’s iPhone.