CES 2012: Intel banking on Win 8 for tablet market

Looking ahead at the year 2012, Intel has a lot going for them with the release of two new generations of Atom-based processors, the successor to Sandy Bridge architecture and inclusion of Thunderbolt I/O technology into the realm of Wintel. While Intel has retained a strong foothold in the desktop and laptop business, it has been less than successful at cracking the mobile devices market.

Image credit: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

According to a report by CNET, Intel has their hopes pinned on the upcoming Windows 8 operating system to help them close the significant gap between their market share and that of companies like Apple, who use ARM based processors. Intel has a long history of working with Microsoft in the PC segment and they are encouraged by the fact that Windows 8 has been developed by grounds-up to work with both touch-based interface and the traditional mouse-keyboard setup. Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini went as far as to say that “Windows 8 is one of the best things that's happened to our company”, during a Credit Suisse conference.

They key reason behind this bravado on Intel’s part appears to stem for the fact that Windows 8, for all intents and purposes, is being developed with two user interfaces or shells. The tile based Metro UI on one hand has been intentionally designed to intuitively work with touch-based interface, while the tradition desktop UI is placed right behind it for a more traditional workstation. Windows 8 is expected to be capable of seamlessly switching between these two types of interfaces without indulging in any kind of virtualization. This feature will work in favor of components manufacturers like Intel with reduced CPU load and it will also likely ease the minds of application developers. Speaking of the latter, Intel will be entering the tablet PC market from day-one with an inventory of over 6 million apps written for x86 platform.

Otellini stated that in the weeks and coming ahead, a number of systems manufactures will release Windows 8 based devices with touch interfaces as well as convertible, hybrid form factors. He went on to add that the key to success in the year ahead will be to bring the retail price of device like the Ultrabook to as low as $699.

  
 Source: CNET News