Crunch won't meddle with our MID says Senior Intel Veep

ECONOMIC CYCLES and crashes actually drive innovation, according to Intel senior Veep Anand Chandrasekher, head of the firm's Ultra Mobility group. Chandrasekher was speaking at an MWC session on creating a true internet experience on mobile devices.

Chandrasekher reminded his audience that the first mobile phone had emerged in 1973, just after the first global oil shock and that the IBM PC appeared in 1981, just after the second global oil crisis. When the stock markets tanked in 1990, the tech world got Sir Tim Berners Lee's World Wide Web for its troubles and, in 2001, as the world reeled from the dot com crisis, Apple gave the world Ipod with Itunes, while Intel did its bit for global morale by bringing out Centrino.

The question, therefore, according to Chandrasekher is "What's next?" Basically, if you're stuck in credit crunch, grab your nearest company engineer and start innovating.

Yes, of course, it is easier said than done. And Chandrasekher admitted it was indeed tough for firms to pick and choose where to invest during the downturn, but noted the best innovations had, historically, tended to occur during the most difficult of economic times.

And so what if we're drowning in debt? We've got the Internet to distract us and keep us all happy; something Chandrasekher notedhas now managed to almost entirely permeate every aspect of our lives.

Chandrasekher highlighted Barack Obama's success in reaching out to a new pool of "young and restless" voters in a "stunningly effective manner", mainly via YouTube.

"The Internet has arrived in a way that it wants to be taken any time, anywhere" said Chandrasekher who went on to say users of the Interwibble were actually a fickle lot. "What people liked yesterday isn't what they like today", reminded Chandhesker noting the Internet was incredibly dynamic with over 10,000 new sites being created on a daily basis.

So what does all that have to do with phones? Well, said Chandrasekher, "I think we will look at 2008 in a few years and say ‘it was the year of mobility'".

He noted that with the emergence of Google's Android, Nokia's Symbian gaining strength and Apple's app store, people were placing more and more emphasis on applications and experiences and noted "even launching Atom is about applications".

Apps aside, however, Chandrasekher was adamant the industry put more focus on wireless mobile connectivity, noting "a great Internet experience without broadband wireless basically, as the technical term goes, sucks". Continuing with the suction analogies, Chandrasekher went on "sipping data is pretty enjoyable, but slurping it is a lot more enjoyable".

Quoting a recent poll of smartphone users, Chandrasekher reckoned a vast majority of smartphone users were "dissatisfied with their internet experience" for a variety of reasons, but mainly because the Internet they got on their phone wasn't the same as the internet they were used to and they wanted the full Interwibble experience.

Performance was equally important, noted the Chipzilla veep, especially in an age of rich media. This is where the Intel pitch really got going, with Chandrasekher noting Intel's 45nm technology had represented a fundamental breakthrough and that things would only get better with second generation 45nm offerings, and later still, the 32nm process technology.

Chandrasekher boasted that at a time when other firms were umming and ahhing about investment in new technologies, Intel was channeling a whopping seven billion dollars into its 32nm plants, adding "you have to innovate".

By taking the best of what mobiles have to offer in terms of user experience and applications, and combining that with the best of the PC world, Chandrasekher said he reckoned firms would be on to a winning MID combo, perfect to help steer the market through the recession and make it out the other side.

That's assuming Intel doesn't suffer something of a MID life crisis, of course. µ