Google & Intel Announce Intel Android Phones

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Intel CEO Paul Otellini kicked off the 2011 Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today, and he was joined by a (mostly) expected guest, Andy Rubin. Rubin, as many of you know, is the Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, but he’s probably best summed up as “Head Of Android” at the search giant. Otellini and Rubin announced together a new partnership between Intel and Google, including Intel-powered Android devices.

Regarding the deal with Google, Otellini said:

Every time we collaborate with Google, good things come out. I’m excited and have high expectations around this as well.

What is the ‘this’ that Otellini mentioned? Rubin announced at the show that future versions of Android will be natively compatible with Intel processors. I seem to recall a manufacturer like Acer creating their own x86-compatible version of Android and showing it off at CES some years ago, but it’ll be a big boom for Intel if Google makes Android work on x86 processors “out of the box.”

Almost all mobile phones and tablets are powered by ARM processors. Intel’s x86 architecture has dominated the PC space for 20 years, but they have made few in-roads to the mobile space. Their Atom processors, although the standard for netbooks, are generally considered too hot and too power hungry  for phones and tablets.

Regarding that though, Otellini said on stage with Rubin that Intel was making “real progress” on getting their processors into smartphones, and said that we can see the first Intel smartphones in the first half of 2012.

The last collaboration between Google and Intel was Google TV. Both are major partners in that project, with Intel chips powering all Google TV set-top boxes and televisions.