Intel Shows Off Its Smart Phone and Tablet for 2012
Prototype devices show Intel chips running devices that could challenge the iPhone and iPad early next year. — The era of the personal computer dawned thanks in no small part to the chip maker Intel.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the payoff of a five-year arc: Intel has been talking about putting 'the Internet in your pocket' since at least 2007, and GigaOM profiled its low-power Atom work as far back as 2010. What is new this week is hardware you can hold — working smartphone and tablet prototypes built on the Medfield platform, picked up by Geek.com alongside Technology Review.
The stakes are set by the corpus itself: the iPad was carrying 97% of tablet web traffic as of October 2011, and Intel has already committed a $300 million fund to push notebook makers toward MacBook Air-style Ultrabooks. Mobile is the one Apple-led category where Intel has no silicon shipped yet, and these prototypes are its entry ticket.
First-order effects
- Android device makers gain a credible x86 alternative to ARM-based application processors for 2012 handsets and tablets, ending Qualcomm's and other ARM licensees' uncontested run at Intel's expense.
- Intel's own roadmap tightens around a two-front fight: Medfield phones and tablets in early 2012, with Ivy Bridge desktop processors confirmed for Q2 2012.
Second-order effects
- ARM licensees face their first direct architectural competition in volume mobile devices, pressuring them to compete on power-per-dollar rather than incumbency — the same playbook Intel ran against Apple's MacBook Air with the Ultrabook program.
- If Medfield devices reach shelves at aggressive price points, they give carriers and OEMs leverage in component negotiations across the whole Android supply chain.
Third-order effects
- The prototypes frame the structural question of the post-PC era: whether the x86-plus-Windows franchise that made Intel can be extended into ARM's home territory, or whether mobile remains architecturally closed to it.
- Whether these devices actually dent the iPhone and iPad is unconfirmed — the 'challenge Apple' framing is positioning, not a demonstrated result — but the attempt signals that Intel intends to keep paying the entry fee until it lands.
The trend: Mobile computing is consolidating into an architecture war between Intel's x86 and the ARM ecosystem, with each new reference design raising the cost of staying out of the other's market.