Intel Unveils its new Mobile & Tablet Strategy at MWC 2013

News
By Tarun Iyer
published

Clover Trail+, the world's smallest 4G Modem and "Tablets with Intel Inside" are prominent features of Intel's new accelerated mobile strategy

At this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Intel unveiled its "accelerated mobile strategy" that aims to increase the company's presence in the expanding mobile and tablet market. Contained in this strategy is the previously mentioned launch of the dual-core Atom "Clover Trail+" SoC, the XMM 7160 4G LTE Modem and the company's plans for tablets and emerging markets.

The Intel XMM 7160 is one of the smallest and lowest power multimode LTE modems (LTE / DC-HSPA+ / EDGE) that can be integrated into a variety of devices such as smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks. The XMM 7160 will support 15 LTE bands simultaneously and will begin shipments to OEMs in the first half of 2013. The introduction of this modem is expected to coincide with a general optimization of the company's portfolio of SoC devices including the upcoming 22 nm Merrifield Atom SoC.

Intel also placed considerable emphasis on its expanding global presence and the "tremendous opportunity" offered by developing markets, specifically focusing on the Atom Z2420 "Lexington" which has been used in value smartphones by Acer, Lava, Safaricom and Etisalat. The latter company will be debuting an Intel-based handset in Egypt this April and marks the first introduction of the Z2420 in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

Finally, Intel aims to launch a range of "Tablets with Intel Inside" based on the upcoming quad-core Atom "Bay Trail" SoC. The Bay Trail platform is the most powerful Atom CPU so far and the company claims that it will "help enable new experiences in designs as thin as 8mm that have all day battery life and weeks of standby". The platform is expected to arrive in Q4 2013 and Intel has announced that it is working with Compal, ECS, Pegatron, Quanta and Wistron to bring Bay Trail tablets to the market running both Android and Windows 8.

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Tarun Iyer
13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • NightLight
    smart intel, wait a year or so to see where the market is going, then hit hard!
    Reply
  • dalethepcman
    As long as Intel either increases their video performance greatly, or add's another vendors GPU to the SOC, then this might actually be a good chip.
    Reply
  • teh_chem
    dalethepcmanAs long as Intel either increases their video performance greatly, or add's another vendors GPU to the SOC, then this might actually be a good chip.Do you mean along the lines of HD video playback? I thought these did just fine with that. No?
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    teh_chemDo you mean along the lines of HD video playback? I thought these did just fine with that. No?HD video playback shouldn't be a problem for any IGP/GPU from the past 4-5 years as long as there is proper software support for whatever hardware acceleration is available. Pretty sure the main reason to be concerned about the IGP is 3D acceleration for UI and games on 1080p+ screens.
    Reply
  • NightLight
    HD video playback shouldn't be a problem for any IGP/GPU from the past 4-5 years as long as there is proper software support for whatever hardware acceleration is available. Pretty sure the main reason to be concerned about the IGP is 3D acceleration for UI and games on 1080p+ screens.

    I think most company's are allready thinking about super hd...
    Reply
  • I think Intel is using their own IGP for their new Atom's which should be very powerful in terms of 3D. 3DMark on the mobile IvyBridge puts up very strong scores with the latest drivers, so I'm guessing 3D will not be a problem going forward.
    Reply
  • IvyBridge (and newer) with a QuickSync enabled media player (such as Zoom Player) can decode 4K videos with ease.

    Intel QuickSync is currently the most powerful hardware video decoder (compared to CUDA/AVIVO).
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    NightLightI think most company's are allready thinking about super hd...This is an ultra-low-power Atom intended for smartphones we are talking about here.

    Super-HD on a 5-10" screen? Not worth it even if you hold your screen in your face. At 720p, individual pixels are already hardly visible on a 7" screen (awfully large for a phone IMO) even at uncomfortably close range. There are practical limits to how high resolutions can go and more than 1080p on 10" or smaller sounds completely overkill to me.

    Yes, I know, some 10" tablets already push 2560x1600 but that is mainly because line-art and text (static images with fine details) still benefit from extra sharpness to some extent. For moving video, it would be extremely difficult to tell the difference even if video natively rendered and encoded at both resolutions was available for direct comparison between 1080p and 1600p devices.
    Reply
  • somebodyspecial
    This is too late for xmas devices. T4, S800, Exynos whatever (octa etc) will all get first shots. You need to be shipping in July to OEM's to get into xmas stuff. It's not about smarts here, they're late to the party and playing catch up. MS hasn't even joined the party yet which is why they're being left behind in mobile. They should buy a chip company (NV, AMD, IMG.L) and get in this game. Intel won't really be in this competition until 2014 mid-end. Their gpu's aren't good enough to go it alone, and not having it their OWN tech raises the cost. Their socs go for $45-60 while others sell for $20-30. Tough to beat someone you don't want to be price competitive with yet and you're not even the best performer. The coming 14nm may allow them to get there though, but like I said they're out this xmas it seems. They may not even really be in this until 2015. They others are not sitting still :)
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    somebodyspecialTough to beat someone you don't want to be price competitive with yet and you're not even the best performer.While Intel's chips may not have the fastest IGP around the block, their ultra-low power Ivy Bridge tablet CPUs do beat just about anything else out there on performance per watt and benchmarks.

    I use my tablet mostly for watching videos while away from my computer and reading so having an uber-IGP in a tablet is largely unnecessary, I would gladly take longer battery life, extra storage and extra RAM for smoother multi-tasking. Game-wise, I hate having fingers on-screen to use virtual controllers in action games so that rules out most graphics-intensive games.
    Reply