At the Intel Keynote at the CES, CEO Paul Otenelli made quite a few major announcements, some of which will start to bear fruit later in the year. Of the big pieces of news to come out of that event was Intel’s foray into the Smartphone category – providing chipsets for manufacturers as an alternative to existing suppliers.
We were impressed with the performance capabilities of the reference design - if this manifests in a vendor-based smartphone, Intel has a rosy future in the smartphone market.
Intel are not dipping their toes in the water either – they are launching with Lenovo in the Chinese market. This does make a lot of sense – because manufacturing will most likely be based in China, speed to market and scalability will be competitive advantages from day one.
As a chipset manufacturer, Intel could simply provide the processor feature set and engineering samples and leave it to the builders to start from scratch. However, Intel actually develop full working samples of devices to inspire and create a performance baseline that brands can use as a template.
At the Keynote, there were actually a few Reference design models – one for Smartphone, for tablet, and for Ultrabook. The Ultrabook reference design was interesting in its capability to shift into a touchscreen tablet.
Outside of the keynote, the only reference design model that was publicly demonstrated was the smartphone, and it was an impressive display. If this is truly how smartphones built with Intel architecture will be perform, then Intel can’t ignored as a viable alternative for manufacturers looking to improve the experience of their products for customers.
With 4G network infrastructure being built, high definition content becoming the norm, and smartphones increasingly taking share in the mobile phone market, Intel look to be in a good position over the next year.
Check out these live demos of the Intel Reference Design on the Intel stand at CES.
The first one is a spec introduction and web browsing demonstration:
The second one shows a gaming example:
This last one demonstrates high definition video playback:
Would you consider a smartphone if it has an Intel sticker on it?
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