As successful a company as Intel is, they’re hungry for growth, and right now that means mobile. The chip firm may have made laptops mainstream a decade prior, but it’s Google and Apple who are creating the software and hardware that are ending up in millions of people’s pockets. Intel’s problem is that they’re tied to their x86 architecture, whereas everything that’s classified as a “mobile device” these days has a processor that’s either designed by ARM or compatible with the ARM instruction set. Back in the summer of 2010 Intel announced that they would acquire Infineon’s wireless unit in order to help them get into the cellular connectivity business. Up until that point they only offered WiFi and WiMAX solutions, and we all know how well the industry has adopted WiMAX. With Infineon they could realistically tell their customers, and I’m not talking consumers, but instead the guys who build laptops/tablets/smartphones, that they can provide an application processor, graphics processor, and all the 2G, 3G, and 4G connectivity they need.
This week Intel has announced that they’ve purchased Egyptian firm SySDSoft, specifically for their LTE expertise, and that they’re going to employ about 100 of their engineers to get cracking on making Intel a competitive player in the wireless space. Now all Intel has to do is come out with a platform that has competitive performance and power consumption compared to the likes of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon. After that it’s going to take a major announcement from either Microsoft, Google, or Apple, to say that they’re going to transition to this new platform. Then, and only then, can you really say that Intel has succeeded in making a name for themselves in the product categories that will define a new era of mobile computing.
Will it happen? Yes, but it’s going to take time. We’re betting at least another year, more likely two.