Saturday 30 November 2013

Medfield, two years in: What killed Intel’s mobile phone ambitions?

Intel's Medfield reference Android smartphoneAt Intel’s Analyst Day last week, the company spoke a great deal about its plans for the future of tablets and its belief that the PC market was done contracting. Along the way, almost incidentally, Intel gave notice that the company’s old plans for the mobile phone market were dead in the water. To understand how significant the change has been, we need to hop back two years to December 2011 and Intel’s (first) Medfield unveiling.
Two years ago, Intel invited journalists to Santa Clara for a series of in-depth discussions and demonstrations of the company’s first serious 32nm cell phone, codenamed Medfield. Unlike the flash and pomp that had characterized other mobile phone promises from Intel, the company went to great pains to keep its statements on message and believable. Medfield, Intel promised, would compete against midrange smartphones. It would demonstrate Intel’s ability to compete in mobile. Future products, like Clover Trail+ and Merrifield, would then really open the market to x86 devices.

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