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According to some of our sources within Intel, there will be a multitude of Intel mobile design wins being shown at Computex 2014 in Taipei many of which will be running on Android. This includes all of the chips that Intel launched back at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona where we covered Intel’s Merrifield launch. They even showed us one of their reference devices, which were quite prevalent at Computex to get an idea of what could be expected with Merrifield. Even though Mobile World Congress is generally accepted as the place to launch smartphone and tablet design wins, Intel’s product design cycle simply didn’t sync up.
Now, we were told that there would be about a dozen design wins with Intel’s latest and greatest SoCs, however we weren’t able to get exact brands on lock. Considering that this is Computex, I would definitely expect two of those companies to be ASUS and Acer, primarily because they’re the strongest in Taiwan in the tablet business and they are the two companies that are most known for working with Intel. We already know that we’re going to see some new products from ASUS at Computex, since they announce new products every year at Computex. The same goes for Acer, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for exactly which Intel SoCs get integrated into ASUS’ and Acer’s latest products and whether Intel has managed to get others to gravitate towards them as well.
It may be that we could see someone like HTC move towards Intel if they want to take advantage of Intel’s marketing push with their new SoCs, especially considering their financial situation. However, HTC still has yet to acknowledge any SoC suppliers outside of Qualcomm since they built the HTC One X+ almost 2 years ago with Nvidia’s Tegra 3.
Either way, we’ll be interested to see what these mobile devices will look like, as I highly expect to see new tablets and smartphones (likely phablets) and how successful they will be for both their manufacturer and Intel since Intel is still struggling to get themselves into the mobile space. Even with today’s Surface Pro 3 announcement, Intel is still struggling to really make a dent in the smartphone market and is making slow progress in the tablet market. Intel will have a multitude of events at Computex this year, and one of them includes an Intel Mobile & Personal Computing event. This event will have Hermann Eul, Intel’s VP and GM of the Mobile and Communication Group, as well as Kirk Skaugen, SVP and GM of the PC Client Group, co-hosting the event together in order to provide the latest details and plans from Intel and their partners to reinvent mobile communications and personal computing.
