YouTube in Your Pocket

By Jessica Davis -- Electronic News, 9/28/2006

SAN FRANCISCO – Intel plans to create a new category of ultra mobile PCs (UMPC) that are smaller, offer better battery life and extend the Intel architecture to a new class of systems -- systems that allow users to take the Internet with them.

David “Dadi” Perlmutter, Intel senior VP and general manager for the Mobile Computing Group, provided an update on the UMPCs and Intel’s existing mobility products during a keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum here Wednesday.

Intel’s vision of the opportunity for UMPCs centers on the future of the mobile Internet, according to Anand Chandrasekher, senior VP and general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobile Group.

“The fullness of the Internet on mobile devices not been tapped,” he said. “Try to download MySpace or YouTube content to your mobile. When we get those capabilities, we will unleash the full potential of it, and that’s the inflection point we are targeting.” 

Success in the space will require the confluence of several factors, he said, including broadband Internet, likely in the form of WiMax. In addition, advances must be made in the user interface and keyboard interface.

“The confluence comes together in the two year timeframe,” Chandrasekher said. “In that time frame this category starts to rock.”

The category creation will start in 2007 and really come together in 2008, he said. He compared the coming of age of this device to how radios were initially used – as news and information devices. But then in 1921 the first boxing match was broadcast, changing the perception of radio from just a news and information device into an entertainment device.

“A simple event can change the perception of a device,” he said. “The introduction of Centrino did just that.” Chandrasekher and Perlmutter both noted that while notebook PCs existed before Centrino, the category took off once the Centrino platform was launched and gave users access to computing untethered from wires.

Similarly, Intel executives believe that the UMPC “device category is about a completely new class of services and capabilities. We are still in the early stage of experimentation,” Chandrasekher said.

A prototype device shown during both Perlmutter and CEO Paul Otellini’s keynote addresses here at IDF was not so small it could fit into a pocket.  Rather, it was about the size of portable DVD players that are popular for plane trips.  The executives noted that the form factor of the device would shrink, but Chandrasekher said that the device would begin to lose its usefulness once the screen shrank below 5 inches.

And, in spite of the pocket-sized form factor that Intel is planning for the UMPC, Chandrasekher said Intel is not targeting voice applications for the device. 

“We are not going after phones,” he said. “There are a class of devices that will sit on the data network. We will be going after those devices. Today some people call them smart phones. They are serving up rich data.”

When asked whether users would carry both the UMPC and a separate cell phone, he said that 50 percent of smart phone users do already carry a second phone.

Chandraseker noted that while today’s devices are shrunken PCs that try to offer all applications to all users, the UMPC will move “quite a bit beyond that.  It may have multiple functions but the functions will be chosen for the particular market.”

The prototype shown by Intel featured streaming media, GPS and movie playbacks as some of the features that may be included on such a device. The prototype offered a keyboard, bigger than that on a Blackberry device, but similar in look to a Blackberry keyboard, and smaller than a notebook keyboard.

Intel believes such a device will be ripe with opportunity in 2008 when Clearwire and Sprint are expected to have completed their national WiMax broadband wireless data networks.

Microsoft unveiled its efforts around the UMPC, code-named Origami, in March.

In addition to details about the UMPC, Perlmutter said that Intel’s next-generation Centrino platform, code-named Santa Rosa, is still on track for delivery in Q1 of 2007. The notebook platform will feature greater energy efficiency, improved integrated graphics, 802.11n Wi-Fi capability and WiMax options, according to Mooly Eden, VP and general manager of Intel’s Mobile Platform Group.

Intel also announced that Nokia would be its partner for embedded 3G in notebook computers.