Tablets with cooling fans might be on cards next

A number of Taiwan-based cooling fan makers seem confident that there will be a demand of tablet PCs with cooling fans by the later part of this year. Digitimes reports of the Taiwan-based cooling fan maker Sunonwealth Electric Machine pointing out that it has already started shipping out cooling fans to the OEMs. Another manufacturer called Adda says it will launch cooling fan products by the end of this year. In fact, cooling fan based tablets are expected to constitute about 5-10% of the total tablet shipment in 2012.

There are a few pre-requisites though for filling the tablet with a fan. The cooling fans used for tablets should be much smaller in size in comparison to that of the notebooks. Also it has to be very low energy consumer to stay true to a tablet’s battery life. There are other problems the tablet makers might have to address like,

• Unlike netbooks or notebooks, the tablets can be held any way possible – so the position of the fan is very crucial.
• The possible noise these fans make
• The possible change in size of the unit
• The ARM-based tablets possibly won’t need a fan as they are already very low energy consumers. The main target thus will be the Intel-based units.

Tablet PCs are popular for their sleek and light form-factor, portability and battery life. Incorporating a cooling fan has more disadvantages than there are advantages – mainly because we do not know right now how the sleekness, look and portability of tablet can be maintained even after placing another part inside that will definitely be significant in size in comparison to the others.

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