Intel's Oak Trail tablets to be unveiled

There are several companies getting ready with their Oak Trail processor based tablets, and these include Acer, Asus and MSI; but most of the tablets first off the mark will be from Chinese companies.

Tablet PCs based on Intel's Oak Trail processor are likely to be displayed next week in the Computex Trade Show in Taipei. 

The name of the processor, Oak Trail, is actually a code name for the Intel Atom Z670 processor designed for tablets. The ARM based processors have grabbed large market share among mobile devices. 

Intel chips in smartphones in 2012

The company has been promising smartphone chips for a long time, but hasn't delivered on its promise so far. There were speculations that Intel may start making ARM chips also, but it is obviously in no mood to pay royalty to ARM.

Smartphones based on Intel's chips will be ready by as soon as next year, the chief executive of the biggest chipmaker has said.

"You'll see the first Intel-based phones in the market in the first part of next year," Chief Executive Paul Otellini of the company was quoted as saying by the Reuters.

Intel’s Big Mobile Power Play Could Be With Apple… and ARM?

Is Intel about to announce a foundry deal to make Apple chips today? As my colleague Kevin Tofel has pointed out on more than one occasion, Intel is losing the mobile chip war to ARM. Intel’s Atom mobile chip is seen by most as too power-hungry for use in cell phones and tablets, and as a result the chip-maker is finding itself left behind in the growing mobile market. But according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gus Richard, the company is looking to change all that not by swimming against the current, but by partnering up with Apple in order to make ARM-based chips itself.

According to the EE Times, Richard says that his sources indicate Intel (which recently made forays into the foundry business) is competing for some of Apple’s chip-making capacity. Apple is reportedly looking around for additional suppliers of the A4 and A5 chips it uses to power its iPod touch, iPhone and iPad devices, in an effort to reduce its reliance on Samsung, its existing manufacturing partner for Apple’s ARM-based application processors. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) has been cited as a new foundry partner for Apple in the past, but Richard says Intel is another likely candidate.