Sure, Asus is making waves with its plans to launch a $200 Eee PC X101 netbook soon. But a company named Genesi has been offering a 10 inch mini-laptop for $199 since February. It’s called the Genesi Efika MX. Now the company is working on a new platform that could be even cheaper.

The secret is the Genesi notebooks are using low power ARM-based processors. The Genesi Efika MX has an 800 MHz Freescale i.MX515 ARM Cortex-A8 processor. The new platform is based on a Freescale i.MX53 chip which will likely run at 1 GHz or higher speeds.

Charbax from ARMdevices.net got a look at a new motherboard and chipset which can power future computers including netbooks and desktops. It’s a low power chip but like many existing ARM-based platforms it supports 1080p HD video playback.

The Genesi rep wouldn’t be cornered into stating a target price for the new platform, but he did say the goal is to make it even cheaper than the current platform.

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One reply on “Asus, Genesi will see your $200 netbook and lower you with a cheaper one”

  1. The company is primarily targeting developing countries for their market.  So costs are their primary concern but when they first came out about a year ago the cost estimates were about a hundred bucks higher than they are being sold now. 

    Just to show what a difference a year makes and how remarkable that they’ll be able to go even cheaper with the new i.MX53 based board.

    They’re also one of the few companies offering solutions with Linux
    instead of just Android, and their systems can also run Citrix for
    running of x86 programs like MS Office off a remote server for business and
    similar uses.

    Though this may be just a Cortex A8 solution in a market quickly being dominated by Cortex A9 solutions and will begin switching to Cortex A15 sometime next year.  But, while Freescale solutions may often not be cutting edge for performance, what they usually do offer is lower cost for the performance and they still manage to keep the performance range relevant to what people expect from their newest products.

    Also Genesi’s has reportedly developed a API hard float optimization that can speed up Linux performance by up to 300% that should help them better compete with more powerful offerings in addition to their presumable price advantage. Though presently they are only working with Debian and have yet to produce an optimized version of Ubuntu but that should be in the works for a later release.

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