Intel and its PC partners are targeting the tablet market through Windows 8 devices.
After the U.S. PC manufacturer reported weak profits, Intel has expressed how it believes the PC is undergoing a transition to the tablet.
Paul Otellini's following responses suggest that Intel and its PC partners are targeting the tablet market with Windows 8 devices.
"We are in the midst of a radical transformation of the computing experience with the blurring of form factors and adoption of new user interfaces. It's no longer necessary to choose between a PC and a tablet. Convertibles and detachables combined with Windows 8 and touch provide a 2-for-1, no-compromise computing experience."
"In the first quarter we launch Haswell. The single largest generation-to-generation battery life improvement in Intel history...We have a line of sight into what our customers are designing around Haswell, which is this year's innovative Core [processor] product, and Broadwell, which is next year's. I've seen the prototypes of the industrial designs. They're really exciting products. Our customers have not had this level of performance in this kind of form factor before. 10-plus-inch [screen size] types of product are going to be more classic PC level of performance, enabled by these convertible, detachable form factors that will only get thinner when Haswell and Broadwell come on."
He continued on to discuss Intel's competition from ARM: "We've looked at the [new] A15 [ARM chip]. We know our own silicon in terms of Bay Trail and Clover Trail+ and we're very comfortable we can maintain a performance lead here. These devices are simply becoming very small computers, and that's what Intel is exceptional at."
"We are very interested in being a selected foundry manufacturer for certain customers. We don't see ourselves as a general-purpose foundry or competing with general-purpose foundries. We would not take business that enables a competitor. We have a crawl-walk-run strategy. We're still in the crawl stage."
Lenovo recently stressed that it believes the industry is not in a post-PC era. However, official figures suggest otherwise: during the October of 2012, tablet display shipments exceeded that of notebooks. Global tablet shipments are expected to surpass notebook shipments during 2013.
While HP topped the global market for the PC industry during 2012, the year marked the first time the industry experienced a year-on-year decline during the holiday season.
I prefer to have my monitors take up the entire width of my desk, and to not have to clean fingerprints off of them every other day, thanks.
Does this mean they're throwing the ultrabook under the bus?
Until then, tablets are great for the segments they fill, but they can't and won't replace desktops or even laptops anytime soon for the upper markets, esp enthusiasts and a lot of gamers. I could see maybe laptops doing the job before tablets are able to.
At least we still have AMD.
Wow, you owe me a new keyboard. And a screen cleaner.
I prefer to have my monitors take up the entire width of my desk, and to not have to clean fingerprints off of them every other day, thanks.
Possiblity 1:
The home PC is builder is going to have to hope that the custom business PC market is big enough that high end but affordable components that can also meet the home enthusiast's needs are still made available.
Possiblity 2:
The PC and the home gaming system finally merge like they have talked about for decades.
You buy your keyboard, mouse and printer accesories then buy all your software and drivers to download like apps. Retail software and accesories development becomes devoted to only the 2 or 3 competing platforms and whatever Apple is doing.
No more building your own or upgrading. Sucks for us. Gaming graphics stalls for up to 5 years as we wait for the gaming systems to catch up the PC's ability.
Possiblity 3:
After some small power and graphics increases the tablet becomes the new PC and it now has a docking station just like laptops used to. You dock your tablet to quickly connect, keyboards, mice, monitors, or what have you and buy all your software and drivers to download like apps. Retail software and accesories development becomes devoted to only the handful of competing platforms.
No more building your own or upgrading, sucks to be us. Gaming as we know it dies on the "PC" and you are left with the dedicated "Home entertainment" platforms.
Or I'm completely wrong
Intel really really wants you to buy their mobile chips...
The End.
I am glad Intel is taking a serious look at the mobile space. It drives down power consumption and brings someone other than ARM into the picture. For as long as they have existed gaming laptops have been chastised for their horrible battery life. With the push into mobile platforms Intel is bringing power consumption down and battery life up. If GPU manufacturers can continue to drop power consumption and perfect switchable graphics there will be models on the market with gaming-class hardware and 6+ hours of battery life. mITX has also grown in popularity as power consumption has dropped; hardware that used to require big fans and a full tower now fits in a shoebox-sized case.
The enthusiast market will always exist. Desktop-level hardware isn't going away. You can take your tinfoil hats off.