Intel WAS in the phone market with their XScale
product. Otellini exited the phone market and targeted Atom at a
market segment directly above phones with UMPC. Because of this
strategic mis-step, Intel lost out in mobile.
Lost out? I'd say they are down a field goal early in the first
quarter in mobile. This is going to be a VERY long game and no
one has a deeper or more talented team.
Going with x86 has made Intel late to the phone market but it is
the golden product differentiation in the MPU industry. Staying
with XScale meant being just one of the ARM pack and slugging
it out on pricing while kicking back bottom line dollars to ARMH.
Controlling the architecture as well as the process and design
is the formula for offering better, harder to clone, and higher
margin products in any MPU segment. It is no accident that TI,
a historically strong player in DSP and highly integrated digital
ICs, has decided to get out of the mobile processor market, it is
going to be a bloodbath among all the me-too ARM players.
IMO five years from now dropping XScale and pushing x86 across
the entire computing spectrum will be considered the smart move
that extended Intel's dominance across another computing market.
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