Will Amazon buy OMAP?

Texas Instruments (TI) recently announced they were 'defocusing' efforts on their OMAP line of ARM based CPUs (OMAP is their bleeding edge line of ARM based CPUs made for mobile type devices, they also have various lines of industrial ARM based CPUs, but these tend to be based on older ARM architectures). The defocusing has led to rumours that TI want to sell their OMAP devision. Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble use OMAP processors for their Kindle and Nook readers respectively. It seems Amazon has been in discussions with TI for a while and they may be a leading contender in an OMAP purchase. This would give Amazon control of their own CPUs, much like Apple has done with its Ax range of CPUs. Amazon could also use the OMAP processor in devices that may come to market such as a smartphone or other tablet. Amazon may also be in discussions with RIM to license Blackberry OS 10 and also in discussion with HP to buy or license WebOS (which HP took control of when they purchased Palm). Currently WebOS is being open sourced. Amazon have already forked Google's Android and removed all the Google sign-in functionality as well as Google's apps and they run their own Amazon app store.

Blackberry 10 Jam

Yesterday 14th June 2012 Research in Motion held their UK Blackberry 10 Jam event in Vinapolis near London Bridge. The day was full of information about how to build native or HTML5 applications on the new Blackberry 10 operating system. RIM also gave away an Alpha dev 10 phone, which looks pretty similar to an iPhone, but without any buttons (apart form the power button). The unit also has a micro USB connector, an HDMI connector and a tray and slot for a micro SIM. After setting up the device (using your Blackberry ID), you get to the home screen, which gives you 2 apps, the camera and a browser (and of course settings which is part of the OS). Anything else you have to write yourself. In the US, the devices were given out with SIM cards and they are meant to be fully operational as phones (and allegedly there's even a dialler within RIM somewhere). It is possible to pair the device with a Bluetooth headset and then receive calls by answering through the headset. Also in the US developers were promised free upgrades to official Blackberry 10 devices when they are released. This may be the dying spasms of an organisation trying to attract developers with gifts, but Blackberry's OS 10 is actually rather good.