Intel made news last month with the appointment of Brian Krzanich to replace retiring CEO Paul Otellini. The common wisdom was that the choice is aimed at improving the company’s fortunes in the ascendant mobile sector, where observers say it has struggled.
A spate of Intel news this week suggests that the company is not just focusing on mobile, though that area is getting plenty of attention.
At the Computex show in Taiwan, GigaOm said that Intel displayed its Merrifield architecture. The architecture takes aim at the ARM chips that currently drive most smartphones and tablets. The story says Merrifield chips won’t be ready for widespread use until early in 2014.
ZDNet reports that Intel also used the Computex show to display Haswell, its fourth-generation Core processors. The goal is use the Haswell and Silvermont platforms to drive a broad line of “two-in-one” devices that combine laptop and desktop functionality in a single device. Executive vice president Tom Kilroy said that Intel has more than 50 two-in-one devices under development, including high-end ultrabooks.
Intel and Samsung announced an agreement under which the chip maker’s Wireless Display technology will be embedded in the vendor’s televisions. This, according to PCWorld’s coverage, will eliminate the need for a discrete receiver to play data from a PC on the television. This isn’t mobile, but is a big deal:
Samsung is a big customer win for Intel. Around 10 million TVs from manufacturers including LG, Toshiba and TCL already have Wireless Display integrated, and with Samsung, the number will double by the end of the year, said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group.
Samsung and Intel announced a second deal. Investors.com reports that Samsung will use Intel’s 1.6 GHz dual core processor in its 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 3. The tablet will be available worldwide in June, the report said.
Finally, Intel has announced a quad-core Atom chipset, which uses the Bay Trail architecture for tablets, that is integrated with LTE functionality. That’s a first for the company. No timeline on the availability of the 4G-capable version of the chipset was announced. However, two inexpensive two-in-one devices using Bay Trail were announced.
Numerous announcements create the impression of a company moving in the right direction: At least somebody is doing something. The acid test, of course, is whether those announcements are sound. These moves, especially the use of Intel processors in Samsung’s new tablet, seem to be positive.