Intel muscles into smartphones, tablets

ARM has maintained its leading position in such wireless markets, but Intel's latest design wins will most certainly break the dam wall.

Bolaji Ojo, EBN Editor in Chief -- EDN, February 2, 2012

After years of attempts, Intel Corp, the 800-lb gorilla of the semiconductor market, has finally entered the wireless court. The company says that three leading OEMs will design Intel processors into their smartphones and tablet PCs.

At the 2012 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) last month, Intel announced critical design deals with China Unicom Ltd, Lenovo Group Ltd, and Motorola Mobility Inc. These deals represent the company’s first successful challenge of ARM Ltd in the market. China Unicom, Lenovo, and Motorola this year will roll out devices employing the Intel architecture. As a result, the leading semiconductor company will be getting the validation it has long sought as a player in the wireless industry.


These design wins for Intel have huge significance. The company initially fought vainly against the dominance of ARM architecture. Intel’s PC-OEM customers worried about the emergence of another near monopoly if Intel gained a large following in the wireless-equipment market. They even speculated that the company’s power-hogging processors, most of which target the PC market, would not work for the cellular-phone industry.

Efforts to prove the doubters wrong led the company to pour billions into acquisitions and product-development initiatives. Many of the acquisitions—some early in the last decade—failed to produce the desired results, and Intel could not make a dent in the sector. More recently, it began deploying its enormous internal engineering resources and the huge cash hoard it had built in the PC-microprocessor business. Intel has since developed chip sets and reference designs for the wireless market.

These efforts produced the Atom processor, which China Unicom, Lenovo, and Motorola will use. The agreements give Intel the bragging rights it has long desired and signal clearly that it won’t walk away from the sector, despite the past failures. Few companies would like to have Intel as a rival, as Advanced Micro Devices can attest.


Of course, Intel could face another failure if its chips don’t catch on. In that case, the company would have to try again. According to Otellini, the world is moving from a focus on personal computers to a focus on personal computing. Intel cannot afford to be absent from this wireless world. Somehow, it must build on the toehold it has finally secured.

This story was originally posted by EBN.