Intel Inside Your Phone

The Mobile World Congress 2012 was extremely busy and fruitful for me. Over the coming weeks I will be releasing thoughts, inspirations and comments on what I saw there. So starting today is the news item #1.

The Intel - powered Orange Android phone. Intel eventually getting into phones has been something rather obvious. But I was never sure how it will compare against the ARM world. And it seems we have a game changer.

The Orange phone is nothing unusual. This basically is the exact "Santa Clara" Intel's reference design, just repackaged and labeled by Orange. Inside is the 32nm Medfeld chip running at 1.6GHz.

But it flies. At the Intel stand I did several tests based on watching complex web pages to load, scroll, rotate. And my feeling is the Intel - powered device is 2-3 times FASTER than my Samsung Galaxy Note (which by no means is a slug, being powered by a dual core 1.4GHz A9 chip). But Intel beats it by a huge margin. And this is at 32nm geometry. So just imagine what we will have at the next step, which is 22nm. yes I know I am comparing Arm A9, while there already is the A15 coming to market. But based on what I saw, I don't think the A15 will be faster.

There are obviously more Intel - powered phones in the pipeline. Especially Lenovo may score big when it releases Galaxy Note's 5-inch competitor later in Q2.

So we may just face the largest balance shifting in the mobile industry starting to begin. Intel is now fully prepared to push and squeeze ARM's almost 100% market share domination. In terms of dollars involved in changing market capitalization of many players there, this is the biggest news of the 2012 MWC.