Intel's Medfield Not Achieving Huge Shipment Volumes

By Wolfgang Gruener
published

A report coming out of Taiwan suggests that Medfield is "struggling" against the ARM processor manufacturers.

The article comes just a day after Motorola announced its sleek Razr i smartphone with Intel's 2 GHz Z2480 Medfield processor. The Razr i will be available in Europe and Latin America only.

Digitimes noted that Intel has found customers in Orange, Motorola Mobility, Lenovo, ZTE and Lava International and that those who launched Medfield phones have seen "good" sales. There have been no blockbusters and overall sales volume are estimated to be rather modest due to the fact that only a few phones with Medfield have hit the market. Additional Medfield SKUs, however, are expected to become available in early 2013.

It is not surprising that Intel is hitting strong resistance from the mobile market, but to describe the situation as "struggling" may be a bit harsh. There has been a Medfield roadmap for 2012 and, with Motorola launching the Razr i, the initial plans appear to have been met. It was clear that Intel could not take over the mobile market within a few months and so far, Medfield may have achieved all that it was supposed to achieve: Intel has gained credibility that it can crank out a mobile processor that can compete with ARM.

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Wolfgang Gruener
14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • blazorthon
    Well, it's a fairly new product with not many models in the smart phone and tablet markets yet. Sales will probably pick up once dual-core models with good GPUs are available.
    Reply
  • lamorpa
    It was 'struggling' even more before it was released (and before it was designed for that matter). It's just starting to be included in designs. Its current sales are meaningless.
    Reply
  • teh_chem
    I would still argue that smartphones need a better OS platform, not a beefier hyperthreaded intel processor.

    And wasn't it determined that these CPUs are highly inefficient when it comes to video playback? Like, significantly worse than any other hardware platform (to the point where the device can only sustain like max 2 hours of video playback?
    Reply
  • stuartl
    Look who wrote the article, If apple doesn't use it he thinks it must be garbage.
    Reply
  • Tomtompiper
    This phone is a subsidised failure, Intel own an ARM licence, they should use it, you know it makes sense, the ARM version of this handset wins in every way except Sunspider, and that runs on old hardware, not the latest gen hardware.
    Reply
  • tomtom, benchmarks are benchmarks. When you say "every way", you mean the benchmarks that were run. If you look at the low level benchmarks that are underneath the OS level, you'll see that Medfield actually wins quite a few "benchmarks" (see SiSoft benchmarks). What this platform is missing is better optimization for Android and a dual core variant.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    tomtompiperThis phone is a subsidised failure, Intel own an ARM licence, they should use it, you know it makes sense, the ARM version of this handset wins in every way except Sunspider, and that runs on old hardware, not the latest gen hardware.
    They probably are using it. How else would Intel have an ARM instructions set compatibility layer on their Medfield CPUs? Besides, Intel is doing this with x86 to prove that they can. Medfield was a proof-of-concept and its successors will be far better. That it came close to Krait, one of the best ARM designs, in performance per core is most certainly not a failure for a first-generation design.
    Reply
  • rebel1280
    ARM - were better than you (tooke decades to get to the point they are today)
    Intel - Eh...barely (took a little over a year of design to implementation)

    Intel, nothing but good points to you. Another competitor in the market is always good. ARM is pushing Intel to design more efficient CPU's and Intel is pushing ARM to design faster CPU's. No need for hate from a single consumer anywhere. Things are looking up, i was starting to get super bored on the desktop side CPU war (massacre?), glad too finally see some action from someone..anyone really lol.
    Reply
  • santiagoanders
    I applaud intel. Stupid Qualcomm doesn't even release the specs of their chips to the public. Makes writing software to revive a dead bootloader nigh impossible.
    Reply
  • K2N hater
    Here iPhones are everywhere, Lumias and GS3 sell like cupcakes and even highly priced Symbian phones such as the 808 get plenty of love. Medfields don't sell simply because they're neither distributed nor advertised.

    In other words, someone at Intel knows nothing about marketing.
    Reply