ARM Doesn't See Intel as a Competitive Threat

Following Intel's announcement of its Medfield smartphone processor for 2012 commercial products, ARM played down the potential impact of Intel's debut product and Intel's competitive strength. In an article posted by Digitimes, Jeff Chu, ARM's director of consumer, client computing, implied that Intel cannot succeed because it does not offer different products for different purposes. As a result, Intel cannot support the needs of market segmentation, ARM said.

Intel has mainly been beating the drums of performance as an advantage of Medfield over ARM products, and is using its social channels to aggressively convey the message. ARM does not seem to be very concerned, at least not publicly, which is somewhat reminiscent of AMD's communication strategy just prior to the introduction of Intel's Core 2 processors in 2006, which was a turning point for the consumer CPU market. It is difficult to say how ARM and Intel really view each other, but the current PR strategy appears to be showing confidence while virtually ignoring obvious strengths of the rival. Market position, credibility, available platforms and vendor support are on ARM's side, while manufacturing as well as engineering prowess are on Intel's side.

2012 will reveal more of those core strengths and their values when ARM enters the subnotebook race with Windows 8 support and Intel enters the smartphone arena.

  • the same thing amd alway said. good luck.
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  • omega21xx
    By the time the intel phones show up on the market, intel will be behind by a small margin again. Intel can compete but their first chips won't take much from ARM. I will however be interested in intel's next chips, this one not so much, app compatibility is a big problem too.
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  • James296
    and this is they're first mistake, underestimating your enemy.
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  • KelvinTy
    Intel has "too much" resources, and is actively trying to create many more enemies (competitions), it might be wise in the long term, but it could also be very bad news if something horrible come on, e.g. being gang banged by the "alliance" of competitions or even intel's own fk up.
    "New" / "Newer" projects, SSD (potential new controller), Ultra"fail"book, mobile chips, "somewhat" still cannot be improved graphics, new CPU architecture, and long term advance material research...
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  • rantoc
    And another company that underestimates Intel at its core business - Historically resulting in that Intel will put in the overdrive and make a huge leap (Core2 thanks to Amd's underestimation for example) and now it would seem it is about to happens again (this time the leap is thanks to Arm).

    As omega21xx said, the next gen of phone cpu's from Intel will be way more interesting even when the current was able to beat the current competition in most benchmark without drawing loads of power. The next atom get the benefits of Intel's advanced manufacturing and likely several tweaks to improve efficiency. The biggest question fis if Intel will use the extra headroom from the shrinkage ect to boost performance or lower the already in line battery requirements even further.
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  • NuclearShadow
    Oh ARM how foolish can you get? Buy stocks in Intel now because soon they will have a stranglehold on the mobile CPU market. I for one want a piece of that pie.
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  • gravewax
    Either Chu is lieing or he is a complete fool. Intel while still behind have the financial backing and the will to spend on R&D to gain a better foothold in this market, only a fool would discount them.
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  • southernshark
    It seems to me that by the time the atom chip comes out that ARM chips will be about as good, or better, and will have a gazillion more apps, plus they will have a better track record of energy efficiency. So I'm not so sure ARM is wrong. Of course you can't underestimate Intel, but so far the Atom based chip just does not say much to me. If anything atom has such a crappy reputation that I'm not sure anyone really wants it in their phone.
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  • southernshark, Medfield is just chip 1, there will be a lot more to come in 2013 when Intel updates the ATOM architecture and goes all 22nm Tri-gate on ARM. The competition is just beginning.
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  • why not
    Reply