The results have been modest at best, with barely perceptible market share.
Last week, Intel returned to CES with a renewed effort to move into smartphones, this year focusing in particular at the low-end of the smart phone market. The company unveiled a reference design for a full-function low-end smartphones, and announced partnerships for low-end phones with several carriers outside the U.S.
Intel’s approach to the market reflects a fundamental fact of the current smartphone market: the two dominant players, Apple and Samsung, are using ARM-based processors of their own design, and seem highly unlikely to switch to an Intel part. Indeed, Samsung has actually been producing Apple’s chips on a contract basis; the animosity between Apple and Samsung has triggered speculation that Intel might be willing to cut a deal to act as a foundry for Apple’s mobile device processors.
Mike Bell, a long-time Apple exec who now runs Intel’s mobile processor business, noted in an interview with Forbes that 2012 for Intel “was about getting a foothold in the market, busting the myths, showing people what we already knew, that we had a fast, power-efficient solution.” He says there was a widespread – but inaccurate – view that phones using Intel’s chips were less efficient than those based on ARM designs.
At CES, Bell talked mostly about the company’s “value platform,” but added that by the 2013 holiday season there will phones on the market based on the company’s next-generation mobile processor which will be produced on cutting-edge 22 nm process technology.
Bell says the reception Intel has been getting from handset makers has been improving. When he first joined Intel, Bell says, the handset makers weren’t necessarily betting against the company’s move into mobile processors, but instead were taking a wait-and-see approaching. He adds that the proof points are now in the market, and that it isn’t just the chip that gives the company legitimacy.
“We’re creating an engineering and support organization that is focused on phones and tablets,” Bell says, adding that Intel can show people products, the roadmap, software, integration support, carrier testing and tools. “The message resonates.”
As for the company’s recent move to provide fully-baked phone designs for carrier-branded phones, Bell notes that it the company can not only provide them will designs but point them to people who can build them. “For us, it a fundamental part of why people work with Intel,” Bell says. “We’re taking a full systems approach. It’s to our benefit if customers produce fantastic devices, but not many people on Earth have the ability to build them quickly and well.” In some cases, Bell says, Intel is doing 90% of the work to bring phones to market.
Bell says Intel’s push into the value-end of the Android phone market is reflection of the high prices the company has seen in some emerging markets for weakly powered devices. And the Intel design has pretty impressive specs: a 1.2 GHz processor, running Android Ice Cream Sandwich, a 3.5-inch screen, 1080p video quality, a 5 MP camera, dual SIM cards (to allow switching between carriers), an FM radio, a Micro SD slot and a removable battery. At CES, the company announced partnerships with Acer, India’s Lava and Africa’s Safaricom to make low-end smartphones. He thinks a phone like Intel’s value-targeted reference design could be sold at market on an unsubsidized basis in the $125-$130 range.
At CES, I chatted with Bell on camera about the mobile phone processor business; you can see an edited version of the discussion below:
[newsincvid id="24195076"]
