Intel uncloaks 'no excuses' smartphone for emerging markets
Enough features to make an iPhone user green with envy
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CES 2013 Intel has announced a smartphone reference platform for emerging markets that's a "no excuses multimedia phone," according to the general manager of its mobile and communications group, Mike Bell.
"We at Intel think that emerging-market customers shouldn't have to settle for a substandard experience," Bell said at an Intel press event on Monday at CES 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
To deliver that better-than-substandard experience, the platform is based on the new Atom Z2410 processor, code-named "Lexington", which will be available at clock rates up to 1.2GHz, and which Bell promised will have "the horsepower you need to drive Android applications."
Phones based on the new reference design will have features that will make many current smartphone owners in more-developed markets jealous, especially owners of Apple's iPhone, which looks amore than a little feature-poor by comparison.
For example, the platform supports dual SIMs, which Bell categorized along with other aspects of the platform as being especially appealing for emerging markets. "If you have an area covered by two carriers at different data rates," he said, "instead of having to swap the SIMs in and out physically, both SIMs are active in the device."
Intel announced a new smartphone platform for emerging markets at CES 2012
In addition, there's support for FM radio and a microSD slot so users can add extra storage over and above what came built into their phones, plus HD video encoding and decoding and the ability to stream 1080p video to big-screen televisions.
Bell also announced that Intel already has three design wins for the platform, with Acer, Kenya's Safaricom, and India's Lava having signed on.
Seeing as how Intel already has Lava, Motorola, Lenovo, ZTE, Orange, and Russia's MegaFon as partners for the smartphone reference platform it announced at last year's CES, expect more manufacturers to sign onto the new platform to try to crack lucrative emerging markets.
Even though ARM has both a head start and a deserved reputation for power-miserly performance, there are plenty of potential customers to tap in Asia, India, South America, Africa, and elsewhere. ®
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COMMENTS
Re: Emerging markets
It is true that most people will have little money to spend on phones, but let me offer two observations:
1) Average figures are of no use in analysing these markets: India alone has around 1.3 billion people. If you focus only on the upper 20% then you've still got a market not far off the size of the US.
2) In the developing world marginally more people have mobile phones than have access to safe drinking water (although that's not currently full on mobile internet or smartphones). The people of these countries are already demonstrating that they want or need these devices, whether we approve or not.
I think Intel recognise that the value of the basic candy bar handset are gone (Goodbye, Nokia!) and that even for the poor there's significant utility from a basic smartphone. Education, the economy, democratcy, public services - all things which can be improved by better data and telecomms, and which are well provided by smartphones in the absence of Western luxuries of fixed lines, dependable power, and cheap desktop computing.
Intel is probably going to do far more for the developing world by trying to make money than the UK government will by giving away £50 billion quid over the life of this government.
Most Emerging markets don’t need hand-warmers!
The main “advantage” an Intel CPU has over a ARM CPU is that it can double-up as hand-warmer.. so that pretty much limits it to Russia!
does it come with a hand crank to charge?
Batteries are still pants. Pink polka dot pants.
"I can watch the lord of the rings trilogy on my awesome new iclone at 1080p"
"For seven minutes"
And i have access to a charger in my car, a dock at home and a usb cable at work... yet as soon as i make phone calls on it it still dies on me! What if power was less available and more expensive? Lets hope the new chips are less thirsty...
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