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Intel Pushes Into Tablet Market, Pushes Away From Microsoft
jfruh (300774) writes "The Wintel cartel appears to be well and truly dead, as Intel chases after ARM with grim determination into the rapidly growing world of Android tablets. 'Our mix of OSes reflects pretty much what you see in the marketplace,' the company's CEO said, a nice way of saying they see more potential growth from white-box Chinese tablet makers than from Microsoft Surface. Intel managed to ship 5 million tablet chips in the first quarter of the year, although plunging PC sales meant that company profit overall was still down."
ARM is the defecto standard upon all software that is mobile.
How so? Android apps are written in Java that compiles to Dalvik VM. Free apps that use NDK, such as those on F-Droid, can be recompiled by anyone. Proprietary apps that use NDK can be recompiled by their publisher if the publisher wants sales on the other platform. How big is the remaining set of apps that 1. use NDK, 2. are proprietary, 3. whose publisher is unwilling to take the money from Android/x86 users?
My limited experience with Android Arm and Android X86 indicates that Android X86 seems to be a 2nd tier platform with limited support. It seems to be less-reliable.
ARM:
Android: multiple phones, Galaxy Tab II tablet
- reliable, work well, tons of apps most that just work
Other: Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, multiple embedded systems
- strong, reliable, generally works well (except for Rpi network issues)
X86:
Android: Google TV (Logitech), Galaxy Tab III tablet
- flaky apps and limited selection on Google TV
- charging and power consumption issues on Galaxy Tab III
- feels like a 2nd tier platform in beta or version 1.0
Other: laptops, desktops, and servers
- Linux ROCKS for standard x86 netbooks, laptops, workstations, servers
Yep, I have a surface pro 2. I love it for zbrush. It's a one of a kind device for that kind of work. Literally nothing else exists. For the price of a cintiq you get the computer too. I wish they advertised it heavily to artists, instead of ipad users. An ipad user is going to be like "this thing weighs like 5 pounds and is a half an inch thick, I want my dollar/mass ratio to be close to infinity!". An artist will be like "You mean I can do my zbrush sculpting at a coffee shop with the same workflow that I use on a cintiq, AND it can handle 15m tris like a champion? Yes please."
No, at the time Intel was trying to trim down as they had overextended themselves and too many unprofitable departments. I worked in that department shortly before it was sold off; right before that, the department head "resigned" on the heels of very poor performance. Around that time, they also got rid of their consumer products division which made wireless keyboards and mice and a crappy digital camera. Not long after, they went through a big downsizing called "SET" where they just got rid of people all over the company. They went from around 100k employes down to around 80k in just a couple of years.