Google Android is being "side jacked" quite a bit lately,
now that IT IS #1, the numerically predominate OS system on the planet.
The Chinese for example do not like stock Google Android any more, and have cooked up versions of their own. And yes Virginia, Chinese "Android" tablets do contain spywares and trackers and back doors and who knows what else
built right into the hardware itself. Cyanogen (used to be Cyanogen Mod) is now building a custom Android version for major Chinese phone bullders, as is Rockchip, the RK-3188 chipmaker company.
Samsung has now moved completely away from using plain Jane vanilla Google Android, and they have started shipping a forked Android with their own home grown replacements for all the non-free Google support softwares that Google retains the sole ownership of.
This is significant as Samsung sells more phones than anybody else, more TVs and more forms of appliances than anybody else right now.All of these custom Android modifier folks are putting in the resizable windows and other "real work" capabilities into their Android experience. Whether Google does it or not, Android will soon be a full functional OS experience capable of content creation, not just viewing/consuming.
And don't forget good old Amazon, the internet sales folks who have totally forked their Kindle Fire OS completely away from its open source roots into a totally non-free closed source conglomeration of their very own bits and pieces. Ditto to a lesser degree for Barnes and Noble, who has decided to go yet another year losing money putting out slightly substandard customized Nook hardware and software.
Firefox OS and Sailfish OS are actually shipping now with Tisen OS about ready to come out and go for it as well. Of these 3 new OS systems Firefox is one that is totally new, original and open source -- with no entanglements to Android at this time at all.
(but this may change with the next version or two into the future)
Why? Because Sailfish and Tisen both can use their own custom apps out of their own app store AND YOU CAN ALSO GET INTO THE GOOGLE PLAY STORE WITH THEM TO LOAD UP ALL THOSE 400,000,000 ANDROID APPS AND GAMES AND STUFF. Yup, Sailfish and Tisen are Android app compatible ....
======== So, put your world view glasses on and take a look around the globe =======
Remember please, that more new phones and tablets will be sold this year and next year than ever even had existed PERIOD before this past year -- the rate of "trade up" and all the brand new markets opening up to smart phones is simply HUGELY BIG, much much bigger than most folks can readily realize.
Right now we have four complete A9, A12, A15 and A57 ARM generations of processors from at least a dozen suppliers, all of them running balls to the walls on
all of their old original production lines and original nanometer levels located all over the world
just to make enough chips to make all the new phones and tablets and smart TVs and this and thats that will be sold this year and next.
More folks will compute for the very first time in the next 2 years than all of the folks who had ever computed before in the history of the world up until right now -- with all these new folks hitting in the next 24 months.And when the production numbers get rolled up for the next few years, it will be Mediatek and Rockchip holding down the first two "highest number of phone/tablet SOCs sold" slots, with Qualcomm mebbe inching one of them out or else coming in third place with Samsung coming in 4th place.
Unless they can change some stuff up Allwinner isn't going to place very well in this ranking, as they are currently stuck at the 40nm lithography level right now and unless they can get down into the 16-20nm production space race they are doomed to slide yet further down into the pack.
Mediatek does have a plan for a whole lot of new low nanometer chipsets, so one must assume they have invested in production space at one of the new 16-20nm foundry plants being built as we speak. Note please that Samsung is starting to use Mediatek SOCs in their own low end products rather than their own lesser processors (cost is the reason for this).
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Now, are ARM chipsets powerful enough to do a laptop now? Can you really do real work on an ARM device like you use to do on a PC?
You take a look and you tell me.
This dude was simply just trying to see if he could load all of his cores up 100% using stock Ubuntu on an Odroid XU development board, so he simply lit up everything he had and THEN HAD TO GO SCHEDULE A COMPLETE RECOMPILE JOB OF HIS LINUX OPERATING KERNEL JUST SO HE COULD FINALLY GET A 100% LOAD ON ALL 4 OF HIS ARM A15 CORES.