Intel hops into bed with Nokia and Yahoo!

ONE OF the biggest surprises to come out of a briefing on mobility here at IDF given by Intel's Dadi Perlmutter, was Intel's choice of new technology partners: Nokia and Yahoo!

It appears that, somewhat begrudgingly, Intel has recognised that it needs to offer 3G cellular connectivity in addition to WiMax. And that connectivity extends to 3.5G - or more specifically to HSDPA (sometimes known as Superfast 3G).

So, as Perlmutter admitted during question time, the obvious candidate for supplying Intel with a HSDPA capability was Nokia.

From the demos, it looked liked Nokia had merely supplied Intel with a mini PCI express card. But the obvious intention is for Nokia to make and supply an 'embedded' module which Intel can then supply to its own customerbase.

What raised serious interest amongst the assembled hacks was the predicted rate of take-up for the HSDPA module amongst OEM and ODM partners.

Initially Perlmutter claimed that he expected the 'attach' rate to reach around 10 per cent of total notebook sales - rising to 15 to 20 per cent in 'certain geographies', which was a clear reference to Europe.

However, Perlmutter was pushed hard on the subject by several hacks and was forced to give an 'overall' figure of a 10 per cent attach rate across the board for 2008.

The Nokia deal mysteriously overshadowed an announcement from Yahoo! that it has created 'Go for UMPC' especially for Intel. It turns out that this product must have been the mysterious GUI for the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) that Intel's Mooly Eden had previously alluded to.

Intended as a way of putting an 'internet experience' onto a device as small as a UMPC, Yahoo!'s Go for UMPC was distinctly under-whelming in its demo. µ