As part of their keynote address at CES 2014 Intel introduced Edison, a dual core x86 machine the size of an SD card. This chip will be used not for powering smartphones but for wearable technology as well as for the so called 'Internet of Things'. As it is WiFi enabled it can be accessed wirelessly to allow fridges to order food or as in the provided example, start a baby bottle warming before you arrive with your hungry child. With this new focus and the poor performance of Intel's smartphones overseas the rumours that DigiTimes are reporting on seem to be probable. Their deal with Lenovo to provide phones has ended and while they do have a current relationship with Asustek, that could end as soon as 2015. The chances of North Americans getting hold of a phone with Intel Inside seem to be diminishing.
"A rumor circulating in the upstream supply chain in Taiwan has Intel reportedly questioning whether it should quit the smartphone market in 2015 if it continues to see weak performance in its handset business in 2014, according to sources from the upstream supply chain, though Intel has not yet commented on the rumor."
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Intel should cut their losses
Intel should cut their losses and move to wearable fast there’s still a chance to have decent margins in wearable where as in mobile you have to be willing to take a loss to gain market share in developing markets.
With the lead time of the
With the lead time of the design of smart phones you’d think they’d already have a pretty good idea of their presence in 2014 devices.
It’s not like Intel had much
It’s not like Intel had much of a presence in the smartphone market to begin with. The ARM ecosystem partners, in fact a whole industry, based around ARM Holdings’ licensed IP business model had that market, long before Intel professed/showed any intrest. Intel has its work cut out for it, in the tablet market, as the biggest of the ARM ecosystem partners Apple, has licensed Only the ARM ISA, and has produced its own wide superscalar design in the A7 cyclone CPU, that is All Apple, that can run the ARMv8 instruction set, and benifit from the large ARM ISA software ecosystem that has been around for a few decades now. Nvidia has just acheived the same with its K1 Denver ARMv8 ISA based wide superscalar design that is All Nvidia’s own, except for the ability to run the ARMv8 instruction set. A few more ARM ecosystem partners(Samsung, Qualcomm) are expected to introduce/have introduced their own custom CPUs, that through an ARM holdings’ Top Tier architecture license, give them the right to design their own clones, the can execute the ARMv8 instruction set. ARM Holdings with its CPU design bureau to the ARM world, also sells its own refrence designs to thousands of other ARM ecosystem partners, and offers its system integration services to those companies without Apple’s huge in house resources, for other IP such as ARM’s mali graphics, or other graphics, and on core third party licensed IP. There are other companies out there who also offer their own licensed IP, and these collective players make up the huge industry that has slowly built up around the ARM Holdings main partners, and thousands of medium to smaller partners, that already have a controlling foothold in the internet of things market, and are slowly moving, along with the newer ARM custom based designs, up the devices food chain towards the laptop, and server markets. AMD will also be using ARM refrence designs at first, but AMD will also be producing its own custom wide superscalar designs, that can run the ARMv8 ISA, and AMD will be making these ARM based APUs HSA aware, just like its x86 Kaveri designs. Intel will have to compete with AMD and Nvidia graphics on each makers respective APU/APU like products, and Intel will have to forego, completely the high profit margins, and can never hope to obtain enough market share, as it has had in the past with its x86, price them low until you have market share, then up the margins once OEM are under the thumb! The ARM holdings licensed IP model, will be the business model that will/has leveled the playing field between OEM’s and the supplier of CPUs, giving all a taste of freedom in design, supply, and cost, that Intel will never match.
very good move from intel if
very good move from intel if this is true ! why bother on having a brick when user can have everything imbedded in what they use daily . underwear belt hearing glasses .a full laptop computer probably fit on a belt lol . ya I bet arm wont like one bit where intel goes but I suspect user will go gagagoogoo over wearable
It would to too Geek if you
It would to too Geek if you could click that into your Phone and it would boot Windows on the x86 Processor; allowing you to run (perhaps slowly) Win Apps on your Android.
I’d trade the WiFi enabled (which my Phone has) for a bit of ROM/RAM.