For the past few weeks mobile phone companies have been releasing a plethora of new smartphone models. While most of the buzz were surrounding brand giants like Apples new Iphone 6, Samsungs Galaxy S5 and Edge, Sony’s Xperia Z3, other companies have also gotten a share of the limelight. You have companies who are a bit low key like Motorola. And even new players like Microsoft and Amazon.
Not wanting to be left out Intel, a familiar name in PC’s, is also trying out their hand in the mobile phone industry. But how does a company who does not have much of a background in mobile phones suppose to battle well established brands?
What area would they best enter to make a dent with the consumers? Well, they are going to do it in an area they know best, through the introduction of Intel SoFIA microchip.
Intels marketing plan is to sell a microchip that would power very affordable smart phones and they are aiming at producing $50 dollar phones. SoFIA stands for Smart or Feature phone with Intel Architecture. Intel wants to hit the smart phone arena in an area that would make the most impact by making itself affordable and cost effective enough to attract buyers.
So far SoFIA is a chip composed of two 64 bit silvermont cores and a graphics engine and for now it can only handle a 3G connection. This is just the opening salvo for Intel, they plan on releasing new chips next year that would have LTE capabilities and be able to power more complex devices. Right now though the chip does not have the capacity to handle Bluetooth or wifi just yet but they plan on changing that in the near future. This might prove a challenge to sales since companies producing might need to get another chip to enable the capabilities that SoFIA would lack. But Intel doesn’t seem all to concerned, expressing that although it was possible to integrate almost all functions to one chip, it wasn’t Intels intentions to do so.
As per their spokesperson, they didn’t plan on dominating anything but just establish the presence of intel in the industry.
With the introduction of the new chip, the market would be safe toexpect a whole lot more different releases in the coming year.
