Huawei Smartphones + Intel Medfield + Intel/ARM Rivalry

choi

(1) Anton Troianovski, Can You Say 'WAH-wey'?  Chinese Phones Find Niche. Wall Street Journal, Jan 11, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 02223985134572.html
(American buyers of Huawei smartphones can not pronounce or remember its name)

Quote:

"In October 2010, when smartphones cost hundreds of dollars unless buyers signed up for expensive, two-year service deals, Huawei introduced the Ascend * * * for $150 without a contract * * * Subsequent Huawei models released in 2011, like the M835 at MetroPCS, took the price below $100.

Huawei "ranks ninth world-wide in mobile-divice sales * * * The Chinese company broke into the ranks of the Top 10 smartphones sold to the US consumers at the end of 2010 and ranked seventh inthe third quarter of 2011, according to technology data firm NPD Group.

"The [Huawei] phones are finding the greatest traction at regional, no-contract carrier MetroPCS Communications Inc and Leap wireless International Inc's cricket brand

"Lower-income smartphone owners are far more likely than others to use their devices as their way to get online, a survey by Pew Research Center last year found. * * * The device [smartphone] have given lower0income consumer--who may not have wired internet access at home--a new path online.

"Huawei will have to fight to hang on to its market gains. The company has been slower to make inroads among contract, or 'postpaid,' customers, who are more numerous and tend to buy more expensive phones. Meanwhile, companies including ZTE of China and LG of South Korea are getting aggressive on the low-end, ofering cheap phones through Cricket and MetroPCS.

My comment: There is no need to read the rest, though this report is interesting.

(2) Don clark and Shara Tibken, Motorola, levono Plan Intel Phones. Wall Street Journal, Jan 11, 2012
("Intel Corp won a badly needed boost to its credibility in the smartphone market; both phone makers will use Intel's Medfield, a chip whose design is based on Atom)

My comment: There is no need to read this report.

(3) The semiconductor industry | Space invaders: America's Intel and Britain's ARM have long dominated different bits of the global chip market. Now each is attacking the other's stronghold. Economist, Jan 7, 2012.
http://www.economist.com/node/21542402

Quote:

"The wares on show at CES provide the clearest indication yet that Intel is escalating hostilities. It is trying to break into the rapidly growing smartphone market (it already makes chips for some tablets). ARM, meanwhile, has set its sights on the server business, where its low-energy chips should appeal to customers worried about high electricity bills.

Intel has "ten chip factories ('fabs' in industry argot) operating and two more under construction.

"Next to Intel’s leviathan, ARM is a shrimp.

"There are intense rivalries within the [ARM] federation, for example between NVIDIA and Qualcomm, leading makers of graphics chips. And the dividing line between [ARM] federation and [Intel] empire is not always clear. Design-tool firms such as Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys work with both ARM and Intel. So do Microsoft, HP, Apple and others. Intel itself is an ARM licensee. But that is for the most part because those businesses straddle the divide, not because the divide is not there.

"As mobile phones have become cleverer as well as commoner, ARM has gained again. Cleverer phones use more and pricier processors. The average number of ARM-based chips in a phone went up from 1.5 in 2006 to 2.5 in 2010. NVIDIA’s new Tegra 3 system on a chip for smartphones and tablets contains five ARM cores as well as NVIDIA’s own graphics-processing unit. And more, dearer cores mean more royalties. A smartphone can in the best case bring the company eight times as much in royalties as a basic phone, a tablet computer 11 times as much.

"But even if the [power-sipping Atom and Medfield] chips prove effective, Intel will be hard put to build a phone business out from its beachhead. Getting processors on a technical par with ARM’s, says Michael Rayfield of NVIDIA, is 'the easier of the two hurdles. The software hurdle is staggering.' Firms that have invested in ARM’s silicon-and-software combination will be reluctant to give Intel’s chips a chance until they are sure they can handle all kinds of software applications as smoothly as ARM’s.

"While Intel is mustering its forces to attack the mobile-device business, it also faces an assault on its own redoubts. For years the firm has had an iron grip on the PC arena thanks to Microsoft’s decision to design successive versions of its Windows operating system specifically to run on the x86 architecture. But last year Microsoft said that the next version of Windows, which it wants to look and feel the same on mobile devices as on desktops, will work with ARM chips too—one of a number of cracks in the “Wintel alliance”.

"Just as phonemakers are used to things working in an ARM-ish way, most server software is written for Intel’s chips, and reaps the benefits of its 64-bit architecture, which makes accessing lots of memory, among other things, much easier. ARM’s architecture uses a 32-bit standard, and though the company recently unveiled a 64-bit version, no chips making use of it are yet available. Until they are, says Warren East, the [ARM] firm’s chief executive, 'we can’t even address probably 75% of the server market.'

My comment: The quotation will be helpful in reading the long analysis. Take a look at the table, at least.