Intel Pushes Into Tablet Market, Pushes Away From Microsoft 110
jfruh (300774) writes "The Wintel cartel appears to be well and truly dead, as Intel chases after ARM with grim determination into the rapidly growing world of Android tablets. 'Our mix of OSes reflects pretty much what you see in the marketplace,' the company's CEO said, a nice way of saying they see more potential growth from white-box Chinese tablet makers than from Microsoft Surface. Intel managed to ship 5 million tablet chips in the first quarter of the year, although plunging PC sales meant that company profit overall was still down."
Is it dead? (Score:2, Insightful)
Looking at their stock, it never required from dotcom, and has been on a slow decline since (but up from 1 year ago).
I can't imagine mobile CPUs will ever have the margin or profit of desktop CPUs. Or even close.
Sure, there are a bunch of cheap PCs. But apple or samsung comes out with a phone, that's just the same cheapish cpu several millions of times over with no variation.
Is this just another case of a company chasing elusive profits once it's market has been commoditized? In a way, Intel isn't important once Microsoft isn't important anymore.
No need to run x86. So why push x86 into the portable space?
Re:Is it dead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel are reducing power consumption and maintaining performance faster than ARM can improve processing power while keeping power consumption down. The current version of the iPad has a lot more processing power than the first one did but it has a battery three times bigger to give it the same endurance between charges, in large part because the newer ARM chips suck more power than their predecessors did.
Intel-based tablets like the Iconia W series (i3/i5) or Toshiba Encore (Atom quad-core) have the same endurance as ARM-based tablets with similar battery capacities while running a full-fat desktop OS rather than a phone OS with delusions of competency.
Dead? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're in the process of revamping my company's IT infrastructure: About 30 Wintel PC's, 3 Wintel Servers, and 0 *pads.
Unfortunately for my company's employees, we don't make money from watching Netflix or playing whatever this week's hot game is on tablets. We have to do work to earn money, and we can't do work on tablets or phones.
Re:Is it dead? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but the last thing I want on a tablet is a "full-fat desktop OS".
It's not a freaking desktop. I don't use it like a desktop. I don't need the bloat and overhead of a desktop or a desktop OS.
If you want a full-fat desktop OS, get a Windows tablet or a laptop. Because until I can get a tablet with 1TB of storage, I'm not wasting several hundred megs of it on a piece of software which has been steadily growing bigger for the last decade.
The average app I download on Android is well under 30M. And, for me, that's a selling point.
And, really Android is essentially Linux. Are you suggesting Linux is lacking competency? Because Linux has been running efficiently on smaller systems for 20 years now.
Re:ARM is the new Intel (Score:5, Insightful)
I would not dismiss Windows on the tablet. The new Phone OS is going to support universal apps so one app can run on the phone, tablet, and PCs which will help. I personally like Android but Windows big advantages are great development tools and a lot of developers. Now if Microsoft would just allow side loading on tablets and PCs like you do on PCs and PC based tablets.
Re:ARM is the new Intel (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the PC is the refrigerator. Tablets are the beds. A home needs exactly one refrigerator (more are a luxury), but it needs about one bed per person. Now consider that people have been sleeping in refrigerators for the past 20 years. Thus, the market for refrigerators is highly over-saturated, and the market for beds is seeing explosive growth as millions of people have never had one before. In the end, though, everybody still needs a refrigerator. There may come a day when they don't, but everybody knows that a refrigerator isn't a bed.
Yes, the metaphor is a bit strained.
Point being that consumers are realizing that tablets do about 90% of what they want in a PC, so they just buy tablets. That doesn't mean they don't occasionally need something for that remaining 10%. We may see tablet docks that turn a tablet PC into a full desktop setup, but we're not there yet. I can browse the web, watch a movie, play a song, look up information, and type an email or text on a tablet or phone. I can probably do my online banking -- although it's a bit cumbersome. I wouldn't want to write a paper, or seriously manage my finances, or do photo editing, or do my taxes on a tablet (unless I was single, had no kids, had one job which withheld taxes, and did not own a home).
Besides, all Intel has to do is make a better ARM than ARM. They did that before when AMD introduced AMD64, and now that Intel fabs ARM, they can learn the ins and outs of that, since obviously there's something there that they missed. Intel still has the most advanced fabrication plants in the world. It would be foolish to write them off so quickly.
Re:ARM is the new Intel (Score:2, Insightful)
I would not dismiss Windows on the tablet
I'm pretty sure everyone else will though.
Re:ARM is the new Intel (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the PC is the refrigerator. Tablets are the beds. A home needs exactly one refrigerator (more are a luxury), but it needs about one bed per person. Now consider that people have been sleeping in refrigerators for the past 20 years. Thus, the market for refrigerators is highly over-saturated, and the market for beds is seeing explosive growth as millions of people have never had one before. In the end, though, everybody still needs a refrigerator. There may come a day when they don't, but everybody knows that a refrigerator isn't a bed.
Yes, the metaphor is a bit strained.
Point being that consumers are realizing that tablets do about 90% of what they want in a PC, so they just buy tablets. That doesn't mean they don't occasionally need something for that remaining 10%. We may see tablet docks that turn a tablet PC into a full desktop setup, but we're not there yet. I can browse the web, watch a movie, play a song, look up information, and type an email or text on a tablet or phone. I can probably do my online banking -- although it's a bit cumbersome. I wouldn't want to write a paper, or seriously manage my finances, or do photo editing, or do my taxes on a tablet (unless I was single, had no kids, had one job which withheld taxes, and did not own a home).
Steve jobs has some sort of quote about PCs (Windows & Mac) being like trucks, always a need for them but not what everyone needs. It's true though. Three years ago when I went on a trip I'd pack my Netbook to use at the hotel, or at my folks place. Now I'll use a tablet. Much quicker to pick up and use than to pull out and set up and boot a PC (netbook). Mobile has excelled at other things. Though I still like my real digital camera, if I want to take a picture of something and quickly email it off it's a lot easier to use my smartphone. Checking my email is a lot easier on my phone than on a computer (especially at work waiting for the Corporate-bogged down IT image of XP to load on my i7), though composing an email (or this post) I rather use a PC.
Like yourself I like PCs for the heavy lifting: manage photos, do finances / taxes, download media, edit videos / photos. Though I do worry that our options and availability for relatively open PC like platforms may diminish, which wouldn't be a good thing.