Usually when it comes to writing articles, I don’t like to stretch out and look for information that isn’t there but the truth of it is, that when the head of a company speaks out, you should listen. Upon that, usually nothing is said without some form of meaning or angle behind it. This brings us to Intel’s CFO, Stacy Smith who recently during an investors meeting discussed the possibility of the company moving beyond their x86 chipset platform and creating custom chips for their clients.
A little backstory on this entire topic will further guide your thought process to that of mine. The x86 platform is the chipset and design in which Intel creates their processors for. Like the Pentium 4, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and i7 processor of today, all these are designed within a certain design structure and standards and x86 is exactly that. You cannot simply take a i7 processor and attempt to place it on let’s say, Sony’s upcoming S1 and S2 tablets. The flip side of this equation is that you also cannot take Apple’s A4 and A5 custom chips and expect them to power a laptop or at least note yet but that’s an entirely different story and we’re not an Apple blog. Sony has long been a partner of Intel, having first dibs on many of Intel’s newest processors on the PC side. As far back as I can remember, when the Pentium 4 came out or the Pentium M which was Intel’s first mobile processor, Sony was given access to them first, and then the likes of Dell, Gateway and HP would follow. Sony has also used Intel processors exclusively till two years ago when the company decided to use AMD processors in some of their lower offering models.
But today is no longer the computing world of 10 years ago, or even three years ago. Instead, todays hot sectors is mobile computing and I don’t mean laptops. Instead, smartphones and tablets are the real growth sector and the future of computing. This of course does not mean that the laptop or desktop won’t be around in 10 years, but that less people will need them for their everyday use. With exponential growths in that segment, thanks largely to Apple’s iPhone and iPad and now the slue of Android smartphones and tablets, Intel is left in the cold. You see, the x86 platform was never designed for such use. Instead companies like Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Apple’s custom A4 are powering the mobile scene. This then brings us back to Stacy Smith’s comments.
“If Apple or Sony (SNE) came to us and said ‘I want to do a product that involves your IA (Intel architecture) core and put some of my IP [intellectual property] around it’, I wouldn’t blink,” said Smith. “Then you get into the middle ground of ‘I don’t want it to be an IA core, I want it to be my own custom-designed core,’ and then you are only getting the manufacturing margin, (and) that would be a much more in-depth discussion and analysis.”
The comment of Apple is an easy one to consider, seeing how Apple has been the true growth creator of the mobile segment and continues to push the largest volumes of any mobile device creator. However, Sony comes as a surprise to us, seeing how the company has always been a premium product maker in the PC world. It’s really only been as of late where the company has started to put together a smartphone strategy and we won’t be seeing their tablets till later this year. This then makes me wonder if Sony has hinted at future products like their tablets which will need a custom solution and started to look else place for chips and this is Intel’s way of bringing the company back to the negotiation table.
[Via Barron’s]
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