Well, we knew Intel had some smartphone plans to announce when it showed off a reference smartphone at CES 2012 and the chip-making giant said it has struck deals to have Intel-powered, Android-based smartphones from Lenovo and Motorola on the market in 2012.
The chips used to be called Medfield but it is now called Intel Atom Z2460. During an on-stage demonstration during CES 2012, Intel said its chipset could offer a better performance than existing devices on the market.
The first device, the Lenovo K800, will land in China first, which is a huge and potentially lucrative market. Look for this to land in the second quarter with Ice Cream Sandwich and the other goodies you’d expect from a device of this class.
Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha also shared the stage and said it would be partnering with Intel on a multi-year, multi-device strategy. Seeing as how Motorola will soon be a part of Google, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that these devices will presumably be based on Android.
Intel has dominated the computing market for years with its x86 architecture, as the vast majority of PCs and all the Macs use its chips. But as we move into an era where smartphones and tablets are the main form of computing, companies like ARM and Qualcomm have been eating its lunch in the mobile space. This has allowed companies like NVIDIA to also grab a toe-hold in an increasingly-important market.
Even though some may argue that Intel is late to this, it has a ton of resources to push through its mobile initiatives and the Lenovo and Motorola/Google partnerships are quite positive. We can’t wait to put these Intel chips alongside the competition to see how it performs.