These comments have alluded to Intel taking a greater interest in the mobile OS and working to optimize it for their current and future processors. Oddly enough AMD tried to do the same thing, but with their limited budget they once again had to rely an open source project (Android x86). Instead of developing Android on x86 for their own products they donated hardware and hoped for the best.

Intel, on the other hand, has a fairly large R&D budget and can dig into projects like this fairly easily and rapidly when they put their minds to it. This appears to be what they have done now that they have officially entered the mobile fight against ARM they are looking to put as much effort into it as possible.

Intel also wants to hit a $200 price point for a touch enabled product. It is highly unlikely that this will be a Windows based product simply because Microsoft’s licensing scheme would currently not allow for that low of a price. A Windows based system would probably have to hit the $500 range to be competitive (and still fully touch enabled). Android would be the perfect fit for this price point (if they combine it with Atom). Intel is also stepping up on their LTE game and should have two multi-mode LTE radios available before the end of the year. One will be a data only product and the other will combine voice and data.

When Intel had the claims that they were entering the mobile market for real in 2012 we knew that things were going to get very interesting. At times Intel can become very stagnant and boring, but when they chose to move all of that can change quickly. We are going to be very interested to see what ARM and AMD do to answer the new mobile challenge by Intel in the coming months.

-- For those that think this is signaling the end of Wintel… that prediction, much like the death of the PC has been made before and we are still nowhere near to that event. I highly doubt that Intel will stop supporting Microsoft anytime soon, this move is simply to extend into a broader and more lucrative market--

What do you think about Intel embracing Android? Tell us in our Forum