Mobile Phones To Get "Intel Inside" Treatment
from the this-one-goes-to-eleven dept
As part of its drive to grow its mobile chips business, Intel will start putting its "Intel Inside labels on mobile phones made by some unnamed Asian manufacturers -- just as the company is moving away from the campaign on computers. The manufacturers are happy to do it, because they get marketing payments from Intel in exchange for the placement, and they're likely to be companies that make white-label devices without their own brand to push (hang on, if they're making white-label devices that other companies rebrand, what marketing do they have to spend the payments on?) Carriers, though, aren't likely to be so receptive -- apparently Intel doesn't remember the huge battle between operators and handset manufacturers over whose brand got prominence on mobile devices. Operators squarely won that fight, and aren't likely to be interested in allowing yet another brand onto the devices they sell. Intel would probably be willing to toss some more marketing payments at the carriers, but they won't care as much as relatively small Asian manufacturers. Intel commands a tiny fraction of the market for phone chips, and while using the Intel Inside logo might attract a few new customers who are somehow convinced of its significance, it's hard to see it really helping, and the amount of money the company would have to throw at it to make it a large-scale success likely wouldn't be worth it.
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But I used to be an Intel guy. Back in the days of the Pentium III. I still have my PIII 1GHz board and CPU running my server and it's solid. It's when they brought out the Pentium 4 that things really started to make me leary of Intel. They jumped the gun on releasing the new stepping of processors. The biggest problem they had (and still have...) is memory control.
I was hesitant in switching to an AMD processor when I first did. I deliberated and such. Of course as a consumer I was a little afraid of what I might get. I lucked out though and got a damn fine product when I bought my first AMD processor. The Athlon XP 2000+. It only ran at 1.67 GHz but it performed just faster than and a hell of a lot more smoothly than any 2 GHz Pentium 4 did.
Does this mean that I wouldn't switch to an Intel again? NO. I still look at the laptop market quite a bit and I see that Intel's Centrino processors are an EXCELLENT buy. Damn near as good as AMD's Turion line. Just keep in mind that the Centrino came out first... AMD is going to have to keep on it's toes in order to keep ahead of the Centrino because - though Intel it may be - it's a DAMN GOOD processor.
You people who look at brand names before performance are ignorant. Sure. I hate Intel as a company myself. But only because of their business practices. I buy AMD products because they ARE better. Not because they say "AMD" on them. But I'd just as quickly buy a laptop with Intel's Centrino if the price was better and it had the features I wanted...
Let's not get started on ATI vs nVidia though. We all know that ATI has serious issues with it's drivers. They have been plagued by these issues for as long as we can all remember. The drivers have caused many issues up to AND including the destruction of many monitors with a certain release of Catalyst drivers... (I'm sure that the more tech-savvy among us remember that one...) But keep in mind that ATI could always change and move ahead. I personally buy nVidia because they're more compatible, performance is more stable and usually faster. But more importantly...nVidia is INNOVATIVE. They're always coming up with new ways to penetrate different markets. PAY ATTENTION YOU NOOBS. nVidia has already LONG AGO put their graphics chips into cell phones. You've never seen ATI in a cell phone.
But don't forget that the Nintendo Gamecube has an ATI graphics chipset...and it looks DAMN GOOD. Look at Metroid Prime for instance. BEST graphics of any game of that generation.
One should always allow for change... If you don't you'll be left behind.
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Re: Ati Drivers
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If I'm not mistaken...hasn't that always been more or less an unwritten, unspoken law?
You can't even really say that when you think of how many different combinations of hardware there really are out there in the market. One piece of hardware can work perfectly with one...but not the other. It comes down to percentages and ratios. Statistics.
Again I will still point out that ATI loses on that front. nVidia has a much higher compatability track record...
As far as ATI's driver support being improved... Don't you think that it's a little late in the game to suddenly up their actual level of 'support'? Where were they when people's monitors were suddenly dying on those catalyst drivers? I guarantee that you've NEVER heard of such a thing happening with nVidia products. I almost suspect that this is why ATI really hasn't penetrated any other types of markets like nVidia has.
I admit that nVidia has a distint advantage though. One 4-letter word...
3dFX
SLI is based solely on technology that 3dFX was developing. Too bad they screwed up and got caught messin' around with nVidia proprietary coding and technology. Thusly nVidia owned them...and now consequently owns their assets. But they've done great things with their innovations.
I can't help but laugh when ATI comes rolling along with their 'crossfire' setup. But it's just going to turn into a quarterly "my penis is much bigger than yours" battle every time either side comes out with a new GPU. Same old, same old. SLI/Crossfire or no.
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ati and cell phones
If I recall from a recent CPU Magazine article, ATi has numerous cell phones with their chips in 'em. A couple of them are pretty popular too.
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Should we get back to the subject????
But that's not the subject. The subject is mobile phones with Intel Inside.
Intel may have lost some marketing share to AMD recently. But the processing needs of a mobile phone are not the same as those of a high-end desktop. I'm sure Intel are more than capable of providing chips to power cutting-edge mobile phones.
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Re: Should we get back to the subject????
Seriously, AMD Athalon 64-bit chips are cheaper and faster than equivelant priced Intell chips, use less power, and run cooler. all these features would be good in a 'phone porcessor.
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Furthermore.....
NOW let's get back to the subject :)
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not the same person again
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ati
when i bought my new laptop i paid extra for the ati radeon mobility 9200 with 64 mb of ram. i did not intend to "game" with the machine; however, i wanted the kids to be able to play the Sims if they wanted to. Google Earth causes the computer to crash! What really sucks is that Google Earth runs, albeit slowly, inside a Microsoft Virtual Machine on the emulated graphics card on the same computer. Go figure! The really sad part is that the drivers haven't been updated in over a year!
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On Subject...???
Let's not be premature here(words that still ring in my ear since that first........anyway back to the topic).
Intel's potential for success should not be judged simply by looking at their performance in a different market or by looking at their fledgling steps in this one.
Okay this current strategy may not deliver for Intel but at least it gives them tables stakes in the mobile device game while they figure out if they can actually play.
As Boris (no relation) points out, the more the merrier because competition promotes performance and price innovation.
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