More than two years after introducing its first chip for cellular phone communications, Intel Corp finally has a customer. The world's largest chip maker said on June 1, that mmO2 Plc.will begin selling a music phone that uses Intel's Manitoba chip, which was originally released in February 2003.
Intel's Manitoba chip has been widely considered a failure, having attracted no customers amid heated competition with established players like Texas Instruments Inc.
David Rogers, an Intel marketing manager, said Intel reformulated the chip to lower its price, which helped attract mmO2. The phone will sell at retail for 199 pounds and will be available in the UK and Germany, Rogers said.
Despite comments by Chief Executive Paul Otellini that Intel must become a top player in both communications and computing, Intel's struggling cellular phone efforts have long been a thorn in the chip giant's side.
The company can count some high-volume customers for its applications chip. But its baseband chip - the core communications center of a cell phone - had been a flop.
Intel, which did not disclose the maker of the new phone, also said its new baseband chip code-named Hermon - which operates on third-generation cellular networks - is still on track to be introduced in the second half of the year.
Speaking at a company-hosted media event, Intel Executive Vice President Sean Maloney also said he sees demand for notebook computers at the high end of industry expectations.
"The demand continues to be on the high end of expectations," Maloney said, speaking about the market for notebook computers and the company's new family of mobile PC chips, called Sonoma.
"Sonoma is now doing very, very, very well."
Maloney, who is also the general manager of Intel's mobility group, also discussed a tie-up with TiVo Inc's TiVo-to-Go service that will ease the sharing of TV shows onto Intel-based notebook computers using Wi-Fi wireless networks.
"It's another nice little way of getting content in the home," he said.
Comments
Comments are closed.