back to article Intel CEO: 'We will win in the tablet market'

Intel president and chief executive Paul Otellini says that his company is going to "win" in the tablet marketplace. "At Intel," he told reporters and analysts on a conference call announcing Chipzilla's third-quarter financial performance, "we're going to utilize all the assets at our disposal to win this segment: the world's …

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  1. Andrew Pike

    well he would say that wouldn't he?

    you forgot to mention ...may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events that may not come true.

    i agree that they have unsurpassed manufacturing capability but their legacy x86 architecture isn't doing them any favours in the tablet space. support for windows may be an advantage in other form factors but will sell tablets? - espec. if those parts are less power efficient because of the need to support pci.

    power efficiency will be key and in this respect the arm camp will have to screw up badly if intel are going to win the tablet wars.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Indeed he would.

      He mistakes success with quality, "the best compute architecture" is not true, but the legacy of Windows and its applications being x86-only (to all intents and purposes) pushed the x86 to be the dominant architecture with economies of scale following its mind-boggling investment over the past couple of decades.

      But what Apple have shown with the iPad (for all its non-tech features) is you can achieve a great deal with ARM in terms of a usable product with very good battery life, much more than any current x86 model could, and people like it.

      Most importantly is the fact it is not Windows but still accepted, showing that most folk don't actually care what OS it uses. The lack of a real need for AV that Windows suffers from avoids that power/resource hog as well.

      Will the tablet be the item that finally puts serious cracks in the 'wintel' model, at least in consumer product space?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Power efficiency

      I agree, power is where they are going to possibly fall down on this one both on the CPU and GPU. Lots of very fast Arm chips with fast GPU's coming along at power consumptions that make Intel go rather green.

    3. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD

      Let's not let them, hey?

      At present, we're not seeing ARM netbooks because of the intel/windows dominance, which is sad.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    WTF does that even mean?

    > Our design-win momentum is very strong

    Really, where does he get off on that? It means nothing. I guess having spent so many years hitched to Microsoft has warped his brain so now he can only speak the same gibberish Ballmer spouts at every turn.

    Oh, and being on every major tablet OS save one, and feeling pretty good about it.... well, if that one missing OS makes up 99% of the market, and all the other OSes offer absolutely no competing or compelling alternatives, I wouldn't feel good about that. It's like saying we provide the equipment for all steam-based automotive transportation, exceptnig the internal combustion engine, so we feel pretty good about that.

    Numbskull.

  3. mattaw

    Dr

    Intel has been encroaching on ARM's territory of mobiles for years and now they have returned fire:

    The Eagle Has Landed!

    http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/arms-eagle-has-landed-meet-the-a15.ars

    Apart from games, video and gfx what could you do on your 200MHz 32 bit machine Pentium I that you can't do on this beastie? An up to 8 core, 2.5GHz 32 bit out of order ARM part. With all embedded operating systems running on ARM as well as a vast amount of software in the mobile space I think we are seeing the beginning of a fight.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    "unsurpassed manufacturing capability"

    Not just unsurpassed manufacturing capability, also unsurpassed legally-proven capability for strongarming (sic) their strategic customers not to stray from the One True (w)Intel Way with whatever means are at their disposal, regardless of their legality or morality.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/26/after_the_dell_settlement/

  5. Big_Ted
    FAIL

    Fail again for Intel

    Just like with the smartphone / mobile market intel are going to be too late to the market.

    Arm processors will be well ahead of intel for many months, see the new smartphone arms that run 4 HD movies at the same time etc. Arm chips are perfect for mobile devices and thats what tablets are.

    They may be able to get on a few windows tablets for enterprise business but apart from that they are wasting their time.

  6. Chris 3
    Stop

    "'We will win in the tablet market'"

    This pre-supposes that the excellence of the processor is the determinant in who succeeds in the tablet market. It's clearly a factor, but the software is a bigger one.

    1. Goat Jam
      Grenade

      Nope

      This pre-supposes that intel has the capability of bullying its "partners" into not making ARM based products and concentrating their efforts onto making crappy x86 Wintel "tablets" that will be as unpopular now as they have been for the last decade.

  7. MinionZero
    Happy

    Intel are in trouble

    I think Intel is in trouble in the longer term. The X86 very bloated legacy design is way too power hungry, but just as badly it also uses up way too much chip area to create each core. That means they can only create a few cores per chip and even then they use a lot of power.

    Meanwhile ARM processors are small and power efficient. That means ARM can put many more ARM cores on the same chip and still be more power efficient. The first sign they are thinking along these lines is the ARM A15 which is for now, up to 16 cores. (Previously they were all about low power markets but now its clear they are also moving into markets with many cores). Plus with the efficient ARM design, in the future that could easily be used to create even more cores per chip. That is a serious threat to Intel even in their server market, as they are tied to their bloated legacy X86 design.

    I don't see any way to improve X86 chips that couldn't also be applied to ARM chips with ARM still coming out on top. That's because the x86 design is so incredibly bloated. It needs to be clean sourced into a new design but Intel don't want to do that as they have spent years marketing x86 compatibility as so important. So Intel can't suddenly stop without undermining their current income from x86 so they are trapped.

    At this rate, ARM could be the new Intel. ARM is a growing company increasingly hitting Intel at its weakest point. Its about time some serious competitor came along to shake up Intel's design.

  8. Jolyon

    Intel Oil

    Anagramatically.

  9. DrXym

    Unless the tablet is Windows who cares what chip is inside

    It's fine for Intel to say "we will win", but if I'm using a tablet, smart phone or some other device which is not Windows based, I really do not care what chip is inside it.

    There is no x86 / Windows compatibility to worry about, so it really boils down to how long the battery lasts, and can the thing play music, videos, games and the other casual tasks that a tablet will be used for.

    Currently ARM derived chips (with hardware acceleration for video / audio / graphics) are the clear winner in this space because they consume a lot less power than anything Intel produce. That will have to change if Intel stand any chance of wrestling ARM dominance away.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    "tied to their bloated legacy X86 design."

    The bloated x86 design in turn is dependent on the Windows monoculture. Outside the Windows monoculture x86 is largely invisible; x86 is only visible in the Linux market because of legacy x86 hardware being widely available; it's not as though there's anything intrinsically superior about it.

    Windows monoculture is under more threat than ever, from lower power consumer equipment to Linux-centric windowless ARM-based servers.

    Intel have *never* had a worthwhile sustained success outside the Wintel market, have they? IAPX432? I2O? WiMax? IA64? Embedded graphics? They even *sold* their StrongARM business!

    The Wintel market is heading for hard times. Sell Intel, sell MS. Celebrate the new-found freedom!

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