Intel: We Will Flood Mobile Market With Chips

Intel has revealed further details about its future plans for mobile, following the unveiling of the Intel-manufactured Orange San Diego last week, saying it plans to become one of the big guns of the industry.

Mike Bell, general manager of Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group, told TechWeekEurope that “we intend to be a major player in the space and we have the roadmap to do it”, adding that the aim was to get Intel chips into the majority of mobile devices, not create brand awareness.

Why mobile?

When asked what Intel could offer that ARM couldn’t, Bell claimed no one had the advantage in the mobile arena yet, adding that Intel believed it had more resources than other companies and that its mobile division benefited from the work done in the PC division.

He said computing had become more mobile, more personal and that smartphones were essentially mobile computers. The eventual aim was to take Intel’s “PC juggernaut” mobile, he said, calling it a “natural extension”.

However, he did not envisage a day that mobile became more important than PCs for Intel. “It would be crazy to suggest that,” Bell said, declaring that he hoped the PC division continued to grow and that his division would continue to chase them.

Intel said it chose Android over Windows Phone 7 and other operating systems because customers were asking for it and because it made sense. He said the company had “spent a huge amount of effort to make sure the software is as good as the hardware”.

The possibility of investigating other operating systems has not been ruled out, even iOS, with Bell declaring that he wanted their own chip to be so good that everyone wanted to take a look at it. However, he said that Windows 8 remained the company’s platform of choice for tablets, citing the “tepid market response” to Android tablets.

Beyond entry level

The chip-manufacturer has no plans to release a range of its own devices, adding that it only planned to build a “proof of concept” design to show its customers what was possible. Bell added that they wanted this reference design to be a world class phone.

Orange is selling the San Diego on a £15 a month contract or on £199 on pay-as-you-go, but Bell said that this did not mean it was a budget smartphone, adding that the operator had set the price plan. The San Diego is “definitely not an entry level phone”, but said he was delighted that Orange had chosen such an aggressive price plan so that people could see the benefits of the device.

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