Not ideal
This can only go down as yet another backward step for Intel in its bid to become a credible player in the smartphone market. Anand Chandrasekher - Intel SVP and GM of its ultra mobility group (UMG) - has announced he's leaving the company.
The UMG is the part of Intel responsible for developing chips and other products specifically for mobile products, with the ultimate goal being smartphones. Primarily this means the branch of its low-power chip roadmap that started with the launch of Moorestown almost a year ago.
The problem for Intel is that, in terms of devices on the market, it seems to have made no progress since that launch. To be fair to Intel, it always insisted Moorestown was its first effort and would not be low power enough for phones. But it did suggest we might see Moorestown tablets, and since then the tablet market has exploded, with Intel mainly a spectator.
As recently as MWC 2011 in February Chandrasekher was making bullish proclamations about the next chip on the roadmap after Moorestown - codenamed Medfield - and its ability to beat the ARM ecosystem at its own game. He even had a direct pop at ARM CEO Warren East, as you can see in the video below taken by Steve Paine of Carrypad below.
But Intel has been talking up Medfield for at least a couple of years, and the latest news we've read is that we might see it next year. We have to conclude this rate of development has quite rightly been deemed not quick enough by the powers that be, and as the overall boss of the mobile unit, Chandrasekher had to carry the can.
Of course, that's not how it's being conveyed by Intel. "Intel remains committed to this business," said David Perlmutter, EVP and Intel architecture group (IAG) GM. "We continue to make the investments needed to ensure that the best user experience on smartphones and handhelds runs on Intel architecture, and to ship a phone this year. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank Anand for numerous contributions to Intel over his 24-year career here, and wish him well in his future endeavours."
A couple of other IAG VPs are taking over as joint-heads of the UMG. Mike Bell is a director of smartphone product development and Dave Whalen is a director of smartphone product business development at Intel, so they're not entirely untarnished by the failures to date. Presumably, however, they have other ideas about how to solve the problem. We also assume those ideas don't include switching to ARM architecture. How about buying MIPS?
