At this year’s consumer electronics show in las vegas, qualcomm boss paul jacobs will for the first time present notebook pcs that run on his company’s chips, reports the financial news agency bloomberg. At the same time, intel, traditionally the market leader in PC chips, is currently making inroads into qualcomm’s traditional market: also at CES, intel CEO paul otellini plans to present the first smartphones with intel’s new chips.
For years, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, intel, has been trying to conquer the growing market for smartphones and small, mobile internet devices with its processors. According to estimates by the american linley group, the business with devices such as tablets and smartphones and the corresponding chips will grow by 40 percent to 29.9 billion dollars in sales by 2015. To date, apple is the market leader for tablet computers with its ipad – and uses chips based on the technology of the british chip designer ARM.
For a long time, intel was at a disadvantage in the mobile market compared to providers such as the mobile specialist qualcomm or other ARM producers, who are developing much more energy-efficient chips. Even microsoft is now going new ways to not miss the mobile train. While the software manufacturer had relied exclusively on the intel hardware platform with its x86 processors for decades, the company now also wants to run its new windows 8 on ARM chips.
At the CES, intel was also able to present the first tablet computers, which are equipped with intel’s new atom processors clover trail and are expected to be launched in the second half of the year. Technology platform CNET speculates that we may even see the first tablets with microsoft’s new windows 8. According to information from "digitimes", tablets from the hardware manufacturers acer and lenovo with windows 8 are to be included, which are to come onto the market in the third quarter.
Microsoft also has a long way to go to conquer the lucrative market of mobile internet devices with its operating system. The new windows 8 is now supposed to be much better adapted to the operation in tablets than the previous windows 7. Tablet computers with intel chips and window 8 scored particularly well with business customers, estimates "digitimes" with reference to industry experts.