Hitachi, Sony and Gateway will unveil products by the end of this year, but only for the Japanese and US markets. IBM has not specified which markets it will target. Transmeta, which is planning a stock market flotation, launched its Crusoe chip in Europe at the beginning of the year. It claims Crusoe increases battery life in lightweight notebooks to eight hours, more than doubling the two to four hours provided by equivalent Intel chips. The company also claims that notebooks running the chips are quieter, because Crusoe does not need noisy cooling fans.
European regulations are more strict, so that is why products tend to be launched first in Japan.