Traditional notebook and PC sales have been stagnant the past few years, while mobile devices like tablets and smartphones continue to sell in ever-larger numbers. So it’s no surprise Intel’s been working hard to get its chips into mobile devices. And it looks like the company’s succeeding.

Intel chips dominate the Windows tablet space, but a growing number of Android tablets (and even some phones) feature Intel chips. We’ve seen a few new models from Dell and Asus during this week’s Computex trade show… but Intel says that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The company expects to see 130 different tablets with Intel chips in the market this year.

asus memo pad 8

That figure includes tablets that are already available, about a dozen new models, and more tablets that are on the way.

Intel’s new XMM 7260 LTE-Advanced modem is also now shipping to device makers for testing and should start appearing in LTE-capable devices in the next few months.

As for phones, the company’s new SoFIA dual-core smartphone chip with integrated 3G is also on the way this year (and Intel CEO Renee James made the first public phone call using the chip on-stage at Computex) while quad-core SoFIA chips with 3G and 4G are due out in the first half of 2015.

Qualcomm, Samsung, and other chip makers using ARM-based designs aren’t just sitting still waiting for Intel to take over the market. They’ve got new chips coming out too. But Intel’s looking a lot more competitive in the mobile space these days than it was a few years ago.

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10 replies on “130 Intel-powered Android and Windows tablets coming this year”

    1. Incorrect, most Android apps are platform agnostic to begin with and Google has officially supported Android on Intel ATOMs for over two years now… So the SDK’s etc all already have full support to let developers easily optimize for both ARM and x86…

      Sure, support was a little spotty at first but that was two years ago… You’d be far harder pressed to find a app that won’t run just fine now…

      Really, the referenced SA writer your link sourced is a known Anti-Intel guy and the slide is from ARM… Intel’s competitor… So of course they’ll describe Intel in the worse light they can…

      It doesn’t help that the report is about Intel’s older Medfield and Clover Trail+ mobile SoCs, which perform well below what Bay Trail offers and the updated Bay Trail’s, Merrifield, and Moorefield weren’t available when they made those comparisons!

      While one of the reasons it took months before they started releasing Android Bay Trail devices is because they needed to re-optimize for Bay Trail and thus many of those other reports had to deal with buggy drivers, etc and not really final device performance…

      Though, you still have a point on performance but not in the way you think… not that there isn’t still a fair bit of work needed to get apps running as well on average as they do on ARM, since it’s like when Nvidia came out with the Tegra 3… It was behind the curve but still managed to be competitive…

      But because Bay Trail’s GMA is still only about equivalent to mid to upper mid range compared to the highest options in ARM SoCs… So even with competitive CPU performance Intel needs to catch up on graphical performance…

      But that’s what Intel is doing with their next gen offerings that’ll start coming out next year… So I think the comparison to Nvidia and where they were with the Tegra 3 is a good analogy for where Intel is at right now…

      The upcoming Cherry Trail that will replace Bay Trail for example moves the GMA from a Gen 7 (Ivy Bridge) to a Gen 8 (Broadwell) GPU and increases the maximum number of EUs from 4 to 16… Not to mention it’ll be a 14nm update…

      Intel is also one of the few that plan to still try to compete with Qualcomm and MediaTek with integrated Cellular modems… Nvidia for example is basically giving up… But Intel will have LTE integrated in SoFIA as early as next year and by the end of 2015 is when they’ll introduce the next big architectural update with Broxton… Which like ARM SoCs has the advantage of being easily scalable and customizable…

      Another factor is Intel will be able to push full 64bit Android first and that can give them a little bit of a edge until the other system makers can come out with their own 64bit ARM devices…

      1. You need to read the first article I referenced more closely. The are accounting for platform agnostic apps. Most games (an important part of the market) use non-platform agnostic code to obtain speed and efficiency. Many other apps are ports from other platforms and often have large C components.

        As to it being about CloverTrail+ and earlier. The second post covers covers Bay Trail, both the shipping Z3740 and the not really shipping in quantity Z3770. Neither chip competes well with current ARM chips. Intel has had to provide subsidies to OEMs to use the chips and in 1Q14 lost $600 million in $1.1 billion in sales. As to Cherry Trail. When (and if) it ships late this year, then you can talk about it. For now it doesn’t exist. By the time it does ship, 64-bit ARM chips should be available. From Medfield/Clover Trail onward, Intel has been delivering too little too late… I see no reason to believe Cherry Trail will be any different.

        1. No, the first article doesn’t really account for the platform agnostic apps because they actually account for over 80% of all Android apps! They also don’t use up to date data and ignore the fact there are x86 optimized apps now!

          Again, Intel has Google’s official support and the developers have had access to all the tools they need to easily support both ARM and x86… So unless you’re only using older apps then there’s a lot more support now… Besides, support will only improve as Intel based devices become more common and the efforts to get Android running on even regular PC’s helps promote that trend!

          While the second link also doesn’t account for the fact they took months to re-optimize android for Bay Trail… So again, it only compared to before the Android Bay Trail devices were ready for release, which we’re only starting to see now with many yet to actually start shipping!

          And no, Intel can push 64bit now… Bay Trail, Merrifield, and Moorefield are all already 64bit ready! Also, Intel already provided a 64bit version of Kitkat for developers who choose to implement it… Cherry Trail is just needed to finally push Intel’s graphical performance to be competitive!

          1. Would you like to provide a link supporting you “they actually account for 80% of all Android apps claim”?

            Also, that’s not really the point, many people buy tablets for games… even if the 80% turns out to be true… it won’t hold true for top end games.

            Would you like to provide a link supporting your statement that there are “x86 optimized apps now”? I know you it is possible to make x86 for Android, but I see no reason why developers would be doing this as there are few such devices… how would they even test (yes I know there’s an emulator… but you need to test on real devices too).

            As to Intel and 64-bit… yes, but show me a tablet/phone with more than 3gb.
            ARM is getting to 64-bits when the need is getting there.

            As to Intel and Graphics… see this showing the NVIDIA K1 beating _Haswell_:
            https://androidcommunity.com/nvidia-tegra-k1-early-benchmarks-show-it-topping-intel-haswell-20140113/

          2. First, the K1 benchmarks are from the non-mobile power optimized version… Nvidia always shows it’s best results when promoting their latest product but the K1 is still using the same quad core Cortex A15 processors and won’t switch to a dual core 64bit architecture until later…

            While mobile RAM is going up… both the K1 and Intel’s upcoming Cherry Trail will support up to a max of 8GB, double the present limit of 4GB… 4GB is already starting to show up in business class Bay Trail based Windows tablets and we’ll see more options by the end of the year… and yes, Bay Trail uses the same LP-DDR3 RAM as the rest of the mobile market!

            The K1 reference tablet is configured with 4GB of RAM btw… as yet another example… Companies like Samsung have already started manufacturing 4GB modules and are pushing for their adoption…

            While the benefits of 64bit aren’t limited to just 4GB of RAM… Look at Apple’s A7 for example, they’re still limiting it to 1GB of RAM but it still shows improvement…

            And the move towards pushing multi-tasking even more on mobile devices is helping to promote the adaption of higher capacity RAM…

            By next year they will even start switching over to the more energy efficient LP-DDR4 RAM that should finally help make 4GB the new standard as 2GB is now and 8GB the new upper limit for premium products…

            As for x86 optimization… There’s of course the obvious announcements from both Intel and Google about x86 optimized version of Android… the fact Intel now claims over 90% of all apps will work, when originally it was only about 70%…

            You can look at the code for most apps now and see both x86 and ARM optimized code and the Play Store not hiding most apps means those apps are available for x86…

            You can look at the old Intel Medfield/Clover Trail+ product reviews and compare them to more recent ones to see everything works a lot better now…

            Games especially are telling because it’s only apps like games and video players, etc that require hardware optimization and despite still not having the best graphics you can play most Android games on a Intel device!

            So articles like this…

            https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/tablet-pcs/1306078/intel-merrifield-smartphone-review-hands-on-with-64-bit-atom-reference-device

            Which make note of the improved gaming are one of the many examples showing they have improved support… especially, since the newer Intel chips aren’t relying on the binary translation layer anymore!… Which wouldn’t be the case if they didn’t have apps with x86 support now…

            Intel just had to come a long way on performance… The original Medfield was single core, Clover Trail+ gave it dual core… While the newer chips are based on the Silvermont architecture that provides over 50% CPU performance improvement and up to quad core for over double the performance of those early Intel products and the GPU performance has more than been tripled with Bay Trail…

            Which as pointed out before sitll only puts it in upper mid-range for mobile market GPU performance but shows that is really what’s holding it back as Android is a very graphical OS and the apps that are in question are mainly for media and gaming purposes…

            But, like my Nvidia comparison… the Tegra 3 didn’t have the best graphics either… So that won’t stop it from being a viable option in the market… It may similar take another 2 generations for Intel to fully catch up on graphical performance but their road map is just as believable as Nvidia’s and look at where they are now…

  1. I would bet that if only one OEM offers one tablet or phone device with KDE or GNOME – GNU/Linux – even if it is in dual boot or chroot their market share will be more than the average 1/130 as GNU/Linux users are more than 2% at desktop and there are no tablet or phone offer with their more modern desktops

    1. I would very much like the *novelty* of having a desktop Linux on a tablet, but it isnt of any real use to me.

    2. perhaps OEM should try to deliver smartphone with ubuntu touch or SBC runnig a fully suported Linux distro.

      1. It’s hard because most have to deal with a high level of hardware fragmentation with ARM based devices and a majority of the market is covered by hardware with closed driver support…

        Imagination Technologies for example has over 80% of the GPU IPs for the entire mobile market for example and they’ve never supported Open Source drivers… Along with other companies that also only provide closed drivers for their modems and other components…

        Intel suffers a little from this too as their phone range SoCs are still using Imagination PowerVR GPU’s… But we should see at least some Bay Trail based Android devices and those are using Intel’s own GPU and thus has Open Source driver support, which should make getting Linux distros running on it a lot easier…

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