Intel Corp (INTC)

[ibc]

Chipmaker Intel faces long march to mobile salvation
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/01/intel-idUSL4N0B05H620130201

Intel faces some challenges in the phone market.
They've retreated to the low-end and have needed to subsidize even that market.
I think it will be another year until a high end LTE+Silvermont+decent_gpu phone makes more of an impact.


Sales have not been stellar.

Intel declined to share data, as did ZTE and Lenovo. But Melissa Chau, senior research manager at technology research group IDC, said while Lenovo shipped more than 1 million units of its best-selling phone in China in the third quarter of last year, it shipped only about 20,000 of its first Intel phone, the K800.

...

Industry sources in Taiwan said that Intel had offered extensive lures to try its mobile chips. Intel executives acknowledged they had shouldered some costs but said it did not extend as far as buying a production line of the PC makers.

...

First, some analysts point to Intel's somewhat low-key entrance into the mobile sector, threatening to typecast the company as a low-end phone chip maker.

This would doom it to playing a high-volume, low-margin game against low-cost chip makers in Taiwan like Mediatek.

...

In the long run, analysts said, a company with the resources of Intel had a reasonable chance of building at least some business in mobile.

"Given Intel's vast resources, I am not one to easily discount their ability to get into any market that they target," said Francis Sideco, senior principal analyst at the IHS research firm.