Former Google engineers' Android device to rival Windows Surface for professional tablet market

For former Google software engineer Jeremy Zhou, the idea began when his father handed back a Windows 8 laptop the younger Zhou had given him.
“I thought he’d be fine using it because he had been using Windows for many years, but after two days he gave it back to me, saying he couldn’t use it,” the 38-year-old Zhou said in a recent interview.
The result was Beijing-based Jide Technology, co-founded by Zhou and two other former Google engineers with US$4 million of their own money.
It has developed a modified version of Android 4.4.2 KitKat that brings the look and feel of the Windows desktop operating system to Android and allows a tablet to be used like a laptop, running multiple apps in small windows.
Having attracted the backing of Taiwan’s Foxconn, the world’s biggest contract electronics maker, the start-up has begun producing its own tablet, the Remix Ultra Tablet.
The device uses the new OS, comes with a keyboard and offers, the company says, the same productivity as a laptop.