CES: Qualcomm and Intel Go Head-to-head in Mobile Internet Devices
24 January 2008 - Qualcomm and Intel Come into Direct Conflict in UMPC
- CDMA Giant Unveils Reference Platform for ‘Pocketable Computer’
- Intel Seeks to Re-enter Mobile in Earnest, But Will It Support 3G This Time?
This article originally appeared in Wireless Watch. For the complete
edition, please e-mail paperboy@riderresearch.com
Nearly all the major mobile chip and device players are convinced
that the next generation device will be a hybrid of the PC and cell
phone, something Intel calls an Ultra Mobile PC.
Intel, of course, wants this category of product to be dominated by
a mobile refinement of the PC, and by its chosen IP networks (WiMAX
and Wi-Fi) and its x86 microprocessor architecture.
The mobile incumbents, such as Qualcomm and TI, want the new breed
to be an extension of the cell phone architecture, using their
silicon concepts and the ARM microprocessor, and focused mainly on
3G and its direct successors.
Qualcomm used the CES show to offer a preview of its reference
platform for this sector, codenamed Anchorage and featuring the
Snapdragon chip. Samsung and HTC are early supporters, and while the
product is UMTS and CDMA focused, Qualcomm’s COO Sanjay Jha did
admit the company was working on WiMAX, so that could be an option
in future if Qualcomm sees 802.l6e gaining traction.
This would be another area of conflict with Intel, which will
introduce WiMAX to notebooks soon via its Montevina update to
Centrino, and later to UMPCs via the new Menlow reference design.
This also supports Wi-Fi, but not 3G as yet, highlighting Intelkey
dilemma in mobile - whether to stay out of 3G, where its Xscale
efforts failed, even though its hopes of WiMAX being the dominant
system for high end UMPCs are looking unrealistic; or take the
massive gamble of entering 3G again and going head-to-head with TI
and Qualcomm, for the sake of a greater addressable market.
For now, it is focusing on WiMAX and Wi-Fi, showing off Menlow and
other designs as well as the new low power Silverthorne chips. One
of CEO Paul Otellini’s key tasks this year is to instil confidence
in Intel’s capabilities in the mobile space, where it urgently needs
to succeed to support growth as PC markets stagnate - and to erase
the memory of the failure of XScale, which now belongs to Marvell.
The convergence of PC and cell phone architectures has brought Intel
and Qualcomm increasingly into conflict, and at the Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, both were showing
prototypes of their platforms for next generation mobile devices.
Both silicon giants, along with device makers like Nokia, see the
current notebooks and smartphones evolving into what Intel calls an
ultramobile PC (UMPC), Nokia a multimedia computer or Internet
tablet, and Qualcomm a pocketable computer.
And both need desperately to take pole position in chips for these
devices as they emerge from this year, as by the time UMPCs achieve
mass-market status - probably from 2011 - their traditional revenue
streams will be stagnating.
Qualcomm’s COO Sanjay Jha showed off a prototype “pocketable
computer,” saying “if you can’t carry it in your pocket, you can’t
carry it with you.” Predictably enough, the device has a slide-out
QWERTY keyboard and supports HSPA, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
It has an 800-pixel screen designed to support viewing of regular,
rather than specifically mobile, Web sites. The initial operating
system is Windows Mobile - not too surprising, given Qualcomm’s low
profile but long term closeness to Microsoft, and the fact the CDMA
giant has not really shown its hand yet on Mobile Linux, unlike
Intel and Nokia, which are increasingly including the open source OS
in their strategies. Also, with the immature and fragmented state of
Mobile Linux, it is currently easier to demonstrate an impressive
UMPC platform using Windows Mobile.
The key chip for these devices will be Snapdragon, arguably
Qualcomm’s most critical current product, as it will underpin many
of the company’s important moves to diversify its business into
areas such as UMPCs and consumer electronics. (Indeed, Jha fuelled
the rumor mill by naming Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader as an example
of a non-phone device that could use Snapdragon). The pocketable PC
prototype shown in Las Vegas, codenamed Anchorage, sported a 1GHz
processor claiming peak power of .5W, talking up Qualcomm’s claims
that Snapdragon will steal a march on rivals in the all-important
power/performance ratio, an area where Intel is also making bold
claims for its forthcoming Menlow architecture.
Samsung and HTC are the first publicly announced OEMs for the design
underpinning Anchorage, and expect commercial devices late this
year, aiming to leap in before companies like Apple, which is
rumored to be readying a UMPC-style product for late 2008.
Jha said that, in the medium term, he would target volumes of about
200 million for Anchorage or its successors - about the total
current base of high end smartphones, as compared to 1.3bn cell
phones overall.
Contest with Intel
Neither Qualcomm nor Intel was shy about recognizing the other as
the key enemy. Despite the distance opening up between Texas
Instruments and Nokia, it remains highly likely that the Finnish
giant will rely heavily on its old familiar partner for future
mobile PC developments, and unless this policy changes radically -
potentially because Nokia and Intel come to a détente that,
arguably, both need to wrongfoot Qualcomm - TI’s own R&D program
will remain strongly influenced by Nokia (see Wireless Watch October
8 2007).
Jha and Intel CEO Paul Otellini made similar points in setting out
their respective competitive positions, emphasizing the benefits of
their particular heritages. Jha, generally the friendly face of
Qualcomm, was diplomatic. “We come at this problem from an
understanding of wireless,” he said. “Intel comes at it from an
understanding of computing. We both bring different things to the
table. Time will tell how our vision works versus Intel’s
direction.” He even praised Nokia’s major device in this category,
the N800, saying (as Nokia is reticent to do) that it had outsold
expectations.
Otellini made the opposite point: “It’s a lot easier to add
communications to a small computer than add computing to a small
phone,” he said in his keynote, where he introduced Menlow. “It’s a
major element in our growth strategy.” While nobody could doubt
Qualcomm’s mobile credentials, Otellini had the difficult job of
instilling confidence in Intel’s, given that its last $5 billion
adventure in the cell phone market, in the form of its XScale
processor family, ended in disappointing sales and the offloading of
the unit to Marvell in June 2006 for $600 million.
Intel Re-enters Mobile
Otellini was keen to imply that XScale had been targeting the cell
phone in its current form, which is an area where Intel had no
experience, but that Menlow is focused on the future form of the
mobile device, and this is one that Intel aims to define in its own
image, playing to its PC strengths. “What we are focused on now is
where we think phones are going, not where they are today,” Otellini
said in an interview at CES. “In the past, we aimed at building yet
another chipset for phones.”
Five mobile chips, codenamed Silverthorne, which will underpin the
Menlow mobile Internet platform as well as future notebooks, were
unveiled. All were built using the company’s latest 45nm process,
for improved power/performance ratio. Commercial devices based on
Menlow are expected late this year, and Apple is rumored as an early
adopter, while Lenovo and Toshiba were among the supporters at CES.
Intel now has three low power mobile Internet device reference
platforms - McCaslin, Menlow and Moorestown. Menlow consists of a
Silverthorne processor, a support chip called Poulsbo for I/O and
graphics, and a communications module that can support Wi-Fi or
WiMAX (or in future, other systems). Moorestown combines the
functionality of at least the first two chips into one for even
lower power consumption.
3G Support?
The big question is when (or if) Intel will incorporate 3G into its
devices. Currently, it is attempting the ambitious feat of trying to
claim the high end mobile market entirely for Wi-Fi and WiMAX,
technologies over which it has a large measure of control,
sidelining 3G (and Qualcomm and TI) into lower end voice-oriented
phone markets. This is almost certain to prove a failure, since even
Intel must recognize that next generation mobility will be about
multiple networks. The real future must lie in chipsets that
intelligently move between these, and both Qualcomm and Intel itself
have important software defined radio developments.
Intel’s dilemma is whether to play directly in 3G, where it has
failed before, or to win strong market share for Wi-Fi/WiMAX devices
and then focus on dominating the whole range of networks once SDR
and new networks like LTE evolve. This more gradual approach has
strong commercial logic, but is high risk in terms of ceding market
share at a critical point in the mobile market’s evolution to TI and
Qualcomm. This remains a tricky issue, and Intel’s last effort to
bridge the divide between cellular and all-IP networks, its venture
with Nokia to put HSPA in notebooks, collapsed under the weight of
its conflicts of interest.
Otellini has a tough job this year, with many of Intel’s recent
growth drivers, notably Centrino, facing maturity, slower growth
rates and falling margins. Analysts estimate Intel’s revenue growth
will slow to 6.1% in 2009, according to Bloomberg, down from an
average of 13% between 2003 and 2006, the heyday of Centrino
wireless laptops. As well as UMPCs, WiMAX is of course a high
profile, and high-risk, element in the growth building strategy.
Even this is a field where Intel may soon have to contend with
Qualcomm. Although the latter has been fierce in its opposition to
WiMAX in the mobile market, if it sees 802.16e gaining momentum it
will undoubtedly want to play, as it reluctantly did in Wi-Fi,
despite the technologies being at odds with its own roadmaps and IPR
practises. Jha said, in one of the most definite statements yet that
Qualcomm has not closed the door on WiMAX: “We’re working on WiMAX
as well but our priority is clearly 3G.”
Meanwhile, Intel will support Mobile WiMAX in its upcoming Montevina
notebook platform, due next quarter, which is the latest iteration
of Centrino. It is also likely to deliver WiMAX to UMPCs during 2008
via Menlow. Intel’s WiMAX radio is called Baxter Peak and will be
used by Nokia in its initial WiMAX products, due later this year.
Montevina can optionally use Echo Peak, a minicard that integrates
WiMAX and Wi-Fi on one chip.
Intel Versus ARM
As well as Qualcomm, Intel’s mobile Internet moves are bringing it
into conflict with another unfamiliar rival, ARM Holdings, whose
microprocessor architecture is in 80% of cell phones as well as many
other products. Intel dropped its own ARM-based developments in 2006
in order to concentrate entirely on x86, aiming to extend that
architecture’s dominance of the PC into the mobile market - clearly
essential for Intel if it is to achieve its goal of shaping the
mobile device as the heir to the PC rather than the TI/Qualcomm-
style cell phone.
Many believe ARM already offers what Intel is just talking about in
the UMPC space, and the UK company is stepping up its efforts to
push its long experience in low power consumption in the smartphone
arena, and to convince OEMs that its ARM11 and Cortex A8
architectures can match or outdo the performance of x86. Recently,
it has gained more coherent support from some of its major
customers, notably TI and Samsung, which see support for ARM as a
weapon to try to keep Intel out of their markets.
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