According to Reuters, silicon chip giant Intel is set to open a research and development facility in an as yet to be named city in Finland. If we’d have to guess we’d say either Oulu or Tampere, where the bulk of Nokia’s R&D staff reside. It’s assumed that by the end of this month Nokia will unveil just how many people they plan to cut and where. Several numbers have been thrown around as to the expected number of job cuts, with the latest figures coming in at around 6,000. But enough about the bad news, what good will come out of this?
Intel has been trying, and stumbling, to enter the wireless space. They build chips that use the x86 architecture, which no one in the industry uses. Their chips get smaller each and every year, and thus consume less power, but they’re still not competitive with the ARM powered solutions that are already on the market. Last summer Intel purchased Infineon’s wireless unit so they could recover from their tragic mistake of co-inventing and backing WiMAX. What Intel’s trying to do is be Qualcomm, by which we mean they want to offer customers, not you, but the people who build mobile phones, a platform that has a CPU, GPU, and connectivity built right in. It’s going to be an uphill struggle, and there are rumors floating around that Intel has already designed their first mobile phone and are partnering with ZTE to build it, but how long until we see someone like HTC, or Samsung, or even Apple, use an Intel solution inside their latest mobile phones? If we had to take a guess, we’d say half a decade. With the help of former Nokia engineers however … that can be shortened down to just one to two years.
Oh and let’s not forget about the folks who spent an untold number of hours working on MeeGo only to have Nokia back out and say they’re no longer interested in the OS. Those guys are ripe for hiring.