The proper basis for a marriage is mutual misunderstanding - Oscar Wilde
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Intel pushes Moorestown tablets
FIVE MONTHS AFTER Intel announced a late 2010 start for the company's first Atom processor powered Moorestown system-on-chip (SoC) enabled smartphone, the LG GW990, the South Korean manufacturing company LG Electronics has apparently dumped the model.
Intel's excuse for the evident abandonment of its first Moorestown based mobile is that smartphone testing takes a lot longer than wringing out a tablet design because you are making voice calls that have to operate across a range of telecom networks. LG was not available for comment.
Tablets are easier to test than phones because they are "just for data", Intel's ultra mobile group chief platform architect Ticky Thakkar told The INQUIRER.
But the OpenPeak device that was shown at the Moorestown briefing in London on Tuesday, 4 May was not demonstrated.
On 24 March, OpenPeak announced that its Moorestown powered tablet will be available with AT&T later this year.
At the briefing Thakkar and Chipzilla's head of embedded groups for EMEA and global ecosystems stood behind the phrase, "we'll let OEMs decide when they are going to announce any [phone] products."
They preferred to promote tablets as initial homes for the Moorestown platform, a second generation Atom SoC chip that Intel classes as the Z6xx series. This is despite demonstrating the Z6xx's capabilities on prototype smartphones, not tablets, at the briefing.
However Intel's embedded groups EMEA director, Rod O'Shea told us here at The INQUIRER that unspecified OEM announcements could come later this year.
The opaque future of Moorestown based smartphones also raises some questions about the future of Intel's Z6xx specific Moblin 2.1 OS and its derivative Meego, an OS produced by Intel in collaboration with Nokia.
Intel's new found devotion to tablets also came despite an announcement at the briefing that Chipzilla will support Android with Moorestown. Demonstrating at the briefing Moorestown's advanced capabilities with a prototype device that its employees had not lost in a bar, Intel showed off a slimline smartphone that was displaying multi-point video conferencing and showing an Avatar movie trailer from 1080p data.
Another odd development is that, despite announcing support for Android, the company's new online store for apps will not feature any products for Google's OS, but it will have apps for the Vole's Windows Phone 7 OS as well as Intel's own now homeless Moblin 2.1 and its so far unwanted love child, Meego. µ
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Margin is based on pricing AND cost... people keep printing this asumption that because Atom is cheaper than mobile chips it means they are lower margin... you need to look at production cost (both in terms of raw # of die per wafer as well as a general increase in yield with smaller dies size)
Don't assume this is a lower margin part without knowing the cost piece.
We all should simply ignore 'maddoctor'. He's living on a different planet, and he does Intel no good with his rants.
But your comment about Intel's margins is off the mark. Intel made their best margins ever at 64% last quarter and that included a lot of Atoms. What matters the most to Intel is how much revenue each 300mm wafer produces. The wafer cost is the about same for all products. Because Atom is so much smaller than it's much larger desktop, mobile & server cousins, there can be 10x as many Atoms per wafer as a larger desktop core.
Simplistically, that means it could be sold for 1/10 the price and still bring in the same revenue (& margins) per wafer as a larger desktop cpu. Couple that with Intel's statements that they see Atom going into markets where the desktop cpus can't, it seems to be a win-win for Intel
There is a contradiction in Intel's strategy as you describe it - Atom and it's derivatives are fairly low margin products. Intel does not serve itself by promoting them outside the cell phone arena... Intel ULV chips in the tablet market will make it more money. Perhaps this is why Moblin has become MeeGo, floating somewhere in limbo?
As for MeeGo in BIOS - perhaps it will happen, OK by me. ASUS did it first though with a BIOS-embedded version of Linux.
I don't want to see any Microsoft Tax in any Intel based products. M$ CEO Steve Ballmer did not want to become a good boy for Intel. His rebellious behavior will get a punishment from Intel. So, Google Android and MeeGo will replace Windows in Intel powered products.
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processors/intel-meego-exists-because-microsoft-let-us-down-684665
Intel will convince big software maker like Adobe, AutoCAD, ESRI, and Corel to port its software products to MeeGo. In the future MeeGo is going to be installed in the BIOS rom.