Intel To Go Android In Big Way?

Tweet

When I was at CES earlier this month, Intel held a press conference that was entirely about their new Sandy Bridge processors. In his opening statements, Intel CEO Paul Otellini made it clear that they wouldn’t be talking about mobile products then, but that mobile products would be announced at Mobile World Congress. MWC is just a few days away now, and what will Intel be announcing there? Could it be more Android-Atom products? A new report says that Android 2.3 Gingerbread devices powered by Intel’s Atom processor are coming this year.

Intel is of course backing MeeGo. That’s the mobile Linux-based operating system that they’re working on with Nokia. But, Android is the kingmaker these days. It’s selling tons of phones worldwide, and now we’re seeing people start to go crazy for Android tablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab. ARM has been eating Intel’s lunch in the mobile space. Acer developed an x86-Atom verison of Android a long time ago, I believe (around 2009), but it looks like Intel wants to be a player in the Android market and this rumor says that they’re making deals to have Atom chips in devices.

There’s also a third-party project dubbed Android-x86 which has been working on a version of Gingerbread for Intel processors. As mentioned, Acer ported Android to x86 some time ago, but I believe it was Android 1.5 or thereabouts.

So, MWC is coming up. I expect we’ll see something from Intel. I don’t know if it will be a new Atom processor, but some tablet might be announced running on an Atom processor. We’ll be covering all the MWC news. Stay tuned for details.