Computex round-up: Day three

V3.co.uk looks back on the final day of the trade show in Taipei

The Computex show in Taipei has come to a close

Computex wrapped up yesterday, with Acer and MSI unveiling new products and the launch of a major cross-industry initiative designed to push the use of open source software on semiconductor system-on-chips.

Acer showed off its Liquid E smartphone which runs the Android 2.1 Éclair OS, while MSI demonstrated its Wind Pad. This iPad rival device has eight hours of battery life, multi-touch control, weighs 800g, and has 3G and Wi-Fi wireless transfer plus USB and HDMI ports.

Elsewhere, VIA Technologies showed off a low-cost silicon-powered Smart Touch tablet. However, despite the ultra low $98 (£67) price tag, the device suffered from a sluggish response to inputs, and a noticeably slow performance.

Acer's Lumiread e-book reader was a little more impressive with a slim form factor designed to fit into a jacket pocket. The firm said that its strong point is an International Standard Book Number barcode reader which lets users scan books and buy the text online.

Intel used the show to hint that the next version of Android, codenamed Gingerbread, will be the first Google OS to run on phones powered by its Moorestown chips.

The biggest news of the day, however, was that ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have formed an organisation called Linaro which will encourage the development of open source projects for use on Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS.

The companies hope to improve the consumer and developer experiences on connected devices, and will begin delivering results later this year.