Intel has a brand-spanking new Atom platform built just for mobile devices, but the company figures hardware really doesn't matter much when it comes to tablets like the iPad—it's all about the software. And the chip giant finally has line of sight to the really good stuff, namely Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system.
How else to interpret Intel CEO Paul Otellini's comments on Wednesday's fourth-quarter earnings call with investors and analysts?
"The thing is, tablets are a little bit about hardware and an awful lot about software," he said. "And I think that until you get to Ice Cream Sandwich, the offering isn't as powerful as what's out there with Apple."
At first blush, that's a pretty uncharacteristic admission by the titan of microchips. Code really trumps silicon? Or maybe Otellini's really engaged in a clever bit of misdirection. See, if the iPad's success has everything to do with the greatness of iOS and not much to do with the ARM-based chip it's built around, then maybe Intel isn't so terribly far behind the U.K. chip design firm in the mobile device space as it seems.
Unfortunately, that's probably not going to satisfy Intel's critics. The company has largely watched from the sidelines as mobile device makers have used processors based on ARM's microarchitecture to power their products in recent years. This despite the fact that Intel actually predicted the rise of what it called "mobile Internet devices," or MIDs, several years ago, and built a chip, Atom, for such gadgets.
For all that Otellini touts the software over the hardware when it comes to tablets, Intel knows it's got a lot of ground to make up to wrest design wins away from ARM. The Medfield System-on-a-Chip (SoC) is a promising but still uncertain step in that direction.
Intel's new chips are "a significant technological step toward lower power consumption," according to MIT's Technology Review. Medfield is contained on a single piece of silicon, rather than several as earlier generations of Atom SoCs like Moorestown have been.
Those two accomplishments, plus the fact that Medfield has been optimized for a living, breathing consumer software platform like Android rather than a largely theoretical one like MeeGo, could at long last put Intel in a position to take market share away from ARM.
And the truth is, of all the ARM-based tablets out there, only one has been a runaway success (give or take a latecomer like the Amazon Kindle Fire). Maybe it's always been about iOS and not the chip, after all.
Otellini's clearly happy to take a mulligan for 2011 on behalf of Android tablet makers, whether they want him to or not. Android's first year in tablets may not have amounted to much but 2012 is going to be different, he predicted, thanks mostly to Ice Cream Sandwich. Oh, and Microsoft may also make some tablet noise with Windows 8.
Conveniently, Intel's new Atom-branded Medfield platform runs both operating systems. Sensing a theme here?
"As Ice Cream Sandwich tablets start shipping I think you'll start seeing a little bit better receptivity, you know Google just added the Music Store, the videos are better, everything got a little bit better with ICS," Otellini said. "And so, I think the better test is year two here, in terms of, is there anybody who can compete with the iPad. And the other part of that test of course is the Windows 8 tablets that are being queued up for production."
Otellini also left some room for the various non-iPad tablet form factors out there that may or may not catch the public's imagination.
"I don't know that the whole tablet thing is settled down by any stretch," he said. "And I do have a lot of interest, if you heard me at CES, in these hybrid and convertible designs as they apply to clamshells where there's a significant blurring between what people do with tablets and what people do with PCs.
"The jury is out on, I think, the long-term segmentation by form factor, but I do think you'll see more progress on the Android side as a result of ICS."