The ice is definitely breaking for Intel, the 800 pound gorilla that for a time seemed frozen out of the market for mobile processors because its powerful chipsets, designed for computers, drained the smaller batteries used in mobile devices. But now the world’s leading mobile device maker, Samsung, has tapped Intel to provide the chips for one of its upcoming Galaxy tablets.
Intel’s Atom processor will power Samsung’s upcoming 10-inch Galaxy Tab 3, announced yesterday at COMPUTEX. The Korean giant also said it will make an 8-inch Tab 3, meaning that the new tablet will come in three sizes: 10-inch and 8-inch, announced yesterday, and a 7-inch model, announced last month. The smaller tablets will use ARM-based processors.
The Atom chipset that will power the 10-inch Galaxy Tab 3 is based on Intel’s Clovertrail+ architecture, unveiled at Mobile World Congress. Clovertrail+ is made using a 32 nanometer process, although Intel is already shipping chipsets made using a 22 nanometer process, and expects to ship 14 nanometer process chips soon.
Clovertrail+ can capture 24 high definition pictures a second, if anyone wants to do that, and boasts a more powerful GPU than the iPad’s processor. It’s a dual-core chip clocked at up to 2.0GHz. It has already scored design wins with ZTE and Lenovo, both of whom are using Clovertrail+ in upcoming smartphones.
Intel has also announced a multi-year partnership with Motorola Mobility, which will put Intel’s chips into both smartphones and tablets made by Google’s Motorola unit. Long-time Intel partner Asus is also using the company’s mobile processors; like Intel Asus is trying to adapt its product line for a mobile world. At Mobile World Congress Asus launched the FonePad, a “phablet” with an Intel processor.
But Intel’s relationship with Samsung is likely to give the company more mileage than any of its previous design wins, thanks to Samsung’s dominance in the mobile device market. Intel’s stock is up more than 6% since the announcement.
Samsung is the world leader in smartphone sales, and now the Korean giant has set its sites on the enterprise tablet market, investing heavily in mobile security solutions and winning contracts with corporate giants like American Airlines and Dish Network. So Samsung tablets could eventually bring Intel processors to a host of new customers, just as personal computers made by Dell and HP have entrenched its x86 processors. But unlike Dell and HP, Samsung has its own chipmaking unit, as well as relationships with more established mobile chip providers like Qualcomm and Nvidia. So while the ice is clearly breaking for Intel, it’s too soon to assume the tide will turn in Intel’s favor.
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