Intel’s Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini has announced that an Intel Android phone will be launched in the first half of 2012.
In his keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Otellini said that the chip on Intel-based smartphones is named Medfield, and is based on the company’s PC-based architecture. Andy Rubin, Android’s business head at Google, came at the end of the keynote to show the alliance between Intel and Google.
“Every time we collaborate with Google, good things come out,” Otellini said regarding the deal with Google. “I’m excited and have high expectations around this as well.”
This deal could jump-start the efforts of Intel to expand into the mobile phone market and touchscreen tablet PCs, at a time when PC sales are decreasing. Also, the Android platform, which is licensed to phone manufacturers for free, is the most popular smartphone platform, ahead of the iOS, as well as software by Research in Motion and Microsoft.
While Intel is the world’s top maker of microprocessors, the company has struggled to gain control of the new types of mobile devices, like tablets and smartphones. Now, almost all tablets and smartphones are powered by ARM processors. The x86 architecture of Intel has dominated desktop PCs for two decades and its Atom processors, the standard for laptops, are considered too power hungry and too hot for tablets and phones.
Otellini said that Intel is making “real progress” on putting its processors into smartphones.
via: Ubergizmo
