"Essentially no revenue for Mobile and Communications"
While technically correct, this misses the fact that Intel has been making some huge inroads into mobile (particularly tablets). This isn't reflected in revenue because Intel has quite literally been giving them away, lubricating their use to make up for the industry being heavily ARM-centric.
There are tens of millions of devices out there running Intel chips, and it is lubricating the world for the platform. Right now there are people who are running Android on Intel devices and they have absolutely no idea that they are -- the various Memo Pads, for instance. The Dell Venues.
The Memo Pad ME572C runs an Atom Z3560, a 64-bit x86-64 processor with four cores, SSE4.2, and a powerful onboard graphics solution.
Intel is laying groundwork. Anyone who looks at the revenue number and counts Intel out is being fooled. In a few years I suspect that many of the same people will be crying foul about Intel having bought themselves into a market they missed.
> Right now there are people who are running Android on Intel devices and they have absolutely no idea that they are.
This is good for consumers, but terrible for Intel. Once Intel stops wrapping a $50 bill around every Android tablet chip they sell, why would device makers or consumers choose Intel-powered tablets over anything else?
Android tablet SoCs are a commodity market with many players, and the prices will reflect that. It's a market that might bring revenue for Intel, but will never be able to help support their current fat profit margins.
Once Intel stops wrapping a $50 bill around every Android tablet chip they sell, why would device makers or consumers choose Intel-powered tablets over anything else?
Why wouldn't they is the real question. Previously they wouldn't simply because platform support was mediocre to non-existent, and third party apps didn't support it or ran miserable.
It was an ARM party. x86 was a non-starter. Intel would have zero buyers if they sold at normal prices for what was destined to be a second-rate experience.
Now Android fully supports x86 (and very soon x86-64), and while many third-party apps explicitly support x86 (the NDK makes it a simple extra flag, and of course fully managed apps already fully support it), those that don't still run superbly.
Regularly here on HN we see people who are actually in this industry who don't even realize that Intel and x86 have become serious competitors. That devices they might have used are running it.
Android tablet SoCs are a commodity market with many players
Qualcomm has seen exploding revenues, now pushing $30 billion per annum and great profit margins. It is anything but a "commodity" market, and a few makers are making gangbusters.
Qualcomm has seen exploding revenues, now pushing $30 billion per annum and great profit margins. It is anything but a "commodity" market, and a few makers are making gangbusters.
That is almost entirely from sales for Android smartphones. Qualcomm's leading-edge baseband tech (and monopoly on 3GPP2/EvDO networks) has made them the clear market leader for phones. This is why both Intel and NVIDIA purchased cellular baseband technology (Infineon/Icera), tried to compete in phones for a year, and then pulled back to focus on tablets while they continue to develop basebands.
Without a requirement for cellular, the tablet market is wide open. Like you said, these chips all run the exact same software and users can't tell the difference. It's a commodity market, and is Intel going to compete on price with NVIDIA, Samsung, Qualcomm, Marvell, MediaTek, Allwinner, etc? Not while making 65% gross margins.
You're saying that Android on Intel works, but that isn't saying much. It isn't better, it isn't cheaper (once subsidies expire), and it doesn't have the diversity of dozens of different SoCs to choose from.
It isn't better, it isn't cheaper (once subsidies expire), and it doesn't have the diversity of dozens of different SoCs to choose from.
Are you actually basing this assessment on actual facts? Further, as to diversity, Qualcomm 80x absolutely dominates the Android sphere. Vendors aren't making designs with some abstract SoC that they plug in on delivery day -- they are specifically designing devices around a given SoC. Meaning they choose a 805, or K1, or Atom Z3560, and design the product and release it.
How can you "make inroads" into a market, when you're giving away your product in a non-sustainable way. Sure, tablet makers will take Intel's "just as good" 0$ Atom chip. But will they take it when it's "just as good" for $30 or $40?
They might be trying to get some "lock-in" back, though I have no idea how.
Ballmer's Microsoft apparently missed the Mobile/Tablet revolution assuming that the desktop lock-in they still have could be leveraged. That didn't work for years, but seems to have been ignored until Nadella came in.
Intel might be trying to gain a lock-in by somehow putting the familiar x86 into mobiles/tablets, in the hope that developers would release x86 binaries that would make ARM undesirable. But that's an 80 degree inclination uphill battle. They either have a crazy card up their sleeve, or are unable to respond properly (and the $0 cost + $50 subsidy) is the best they can do at present while trying to craft that crazy card.
Quite the opposite: It's eliminating lock-out, which is where Intel was in an ARM-only mobile world.
Intel has the most advanced fabs in the world, and the limits of their own devices has primarily been their concern about competing with themselves (which I'm sure is still the case. With each new chip they probably have internal negotiations about how to ensure it doesn't threaten their desktop and server chips). If Intel isn't disadvantaged in mobile, only a fool would count them out.
To reiterate, given that I apparently failed to communicate this well-
-The mobile space was essentially locked down by ARM. All of the OS', tools, and apps targeted ARM.
-Intel was on the outside looking in, so they starting giving away chips, offering their own engineering to bring Android (and other OS') to x86, and making it a compelling target for the makers.
-Intel x86 OS images for Android became available and production quality (originally only deployed in developing markets as essentially a beta). Intel x86 toolsets were available. Still, though, it didn't matter much because there was no market.
-So Intel gave away their chips. By the tens of millions. These chips are actually quite excellent (great performance, 64-bit, great graphics, low power consumption), but knowing that they were on the outside looking in, they gave them away.
The Android ecosystem now is one where x86 (and soon x86-64) is as supported as ARM is. There are tens of millions of x86 devices, and it's only accelerating. No one can ignore it.
Intel gave away chips because they were at a disadvantage, but they're quickly getting to a position where if they make a very compelling chip they no longer are sabotaged by being an outsider.
While technically correct, this misses the fact that Intel has been making some huge inroads into mobile (particularly tablets). This isn't reflected in revenue because Intel has quite literally been giving them away, lubricating their use to make up for the industry being heavily ARM-centric.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-to-hit-40-million-mobile-...
There are tens of millions of devices out there running Intel chips, and it is lubricating the world for the platform. Right now there are people who are running Android on Intel devices and they have absolutely no idea that they are -- the various Memo Pads, for instance. The Dell Venues.
The Memo Pad ME572C runs an Atom Z3560, a 64-bit x86-64 processor with four cores, SSE4.2, and a powerful onboard graphics solution.
Intel is laying groundwork. Anyone who looks at the revenue number and counts Intel out is being fooled. In a few years I suspect that many of the same people will be crying foul about Intel having bought themselves into a market they missed.