Notion Ink shares hype-cycle curve, pushes estimated launch date to December

Slashgear has leaked the inside story in a very good article explaining exactly what’s been going at Notion Ink since we first made contact with them in February, when they were at the near peak of the hype curve. It appears that the Adam will be only launched in December, and has been pushed back from its promised Q3 launch date. In the interest of transparency and disclosure, Notion Ink has released a slide explaining exactly why there’s been a delay.

Notion Ink has had plenty of issues with their first investor (any guesses as two who this angel investor from hell was?) who took them from the Peak of Expectations to the Trough of Disillusionment - starting first by scrapping the million dollar app competition, suggesting a shift to Intel architecture, Windows 7, and turning the Adam into a netbook. A year's worth of insider details can be found on this slide.

All these things would have failed to meet end user expectations, to put it mildly – thankfully, Notion Ink has stuck to the original design and specs of the Adam, and gotten over the trough by signing on a new investor in June. From what we know now, it wasn't just Flash stability on the Tegra chip that was the cause of the first mention of a delay in April.

From the slide it also appears that they’re going for a US launch first, but will soon follow it with an Indian launch. Shortly thereafter, they’ll be starting work on EVE, and Adam 2. Any guesses as to what Eve might be? If things go well for Notion Ink with Adam, we will be seeing further iterations that will retain the industrial design and UI of the Adam, but expand it to options that include Qualcomm Snapdragon or Marvell SoC and a cheaper LCD screen.

Speaking of hype, the Adam has seen plenty of pageviews here at Technoholik – our pre-MWC exclusives are still one of the most visited pages, there is no doubt that there is considerable user interest from the tech community the world over. It’s not hard to see why, the Adam promises to be a very compelling alternative to the iPad, bringing together a unique set of technologies never seen before together on one device – PixelQi display, Tegra2 SoC, Android, built-in HDMI and USB ports, swivel camera, a track pad on the back, Flash support, all put together with a new user interface that we’ve only seen glimpses of.