Intel canceling both Broxton and SoFIA as part of their new strategy

[tsk]

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In a report on Intel’s new strategy published by analyst Patrick Moorhead, Moorhead revealed that Intel would be radically changing their smartphone SoC plans, canceling their forthcoming Broxton and SoFIA products and in practice leaving the smartphone market for at least the time being.

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Driven by continued challenges in various semiconductor markets, culminating in weaker-than-desired earnings in the most recent quarter, Intel has set out to change their direction and refocus the company towards what they see as more lucrative, higher growth opportunity markets such as data center/server markets and cellular (5G) connectivity. To get there, the company is making changes to both their product lines and their head count, with the goal in the case of the latter to cut 11% of their workforce by the middle of next year.

After Intels big push to get into smartphones by selling their processors at a loss over the past few years, I honestly did not see this coming.


Source

[awesomeness10120]

Forgot the source link.

As for the news, Qualcomm totally RULES smartphone SoCs in terms of market share. It sucks, but it WAS going to be an uphill battle for Intel. But now that they did this... I don't know what they're thinking.

[themaniac]

well now the only one that can really compete with qualcomm is mediatek and they aren't doing so hot against qualcomm

[VerticalDiscussions]

-....-

 

Anyways, my hopes goes to Nvidia, to make a gaming tablet a reality once again .

 

With 2016-2017 ready hardware of course...

[SansVarnic]

This sucks, I was looking forward to see what Intel would bring to the table on this.....

[themaniac]

2 minutes ago, AlexTheRose said:

It’s probably for the best, actually. Intel’s big enough as it is to be venturing into making mobile SoCs… I’d much rather see MediaTek take on Qualcomm and put themselves in an equal footing with them.

we'll have to see how the helios x30 does against the snapdragon 823(i think thats their upcoming could) to see how long it will be until they are on equal footing

[shdowhunt60]

Intel's push into the smartphone market was misguided from the start. Of course everyone else in the Android space was going to go for cheaper and faster ARM cores. They should've teamed up with Microsoft and put Atom in smartphones. It's the only place where an x86 device would've made any sense.

[AlexGoesHigh]

I blame OEM's on this, just look at the zenphone 2 almost everything SoC related was on par with the 808/805/810 which where qualcomm flagships at the time, that atom was a very capable chip.

 

dunno why OEM's never got to it, ZP2 was like 300$ and while the whole package wasn't perfect it was a freaking speed demon for the price on release. 

[SansVarnic]

2 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Intel's push into the smartphone market was misguided from the start. Of course everyone else in the Android space was going to go for cheaper and faster ARM cores. They should've teamed up with Microsoft and put Atom in smartphones. It's the only place where an x86 device would've made any sense.

Actually this was Microsoft's plan (from what I heard at least) is to possibly put Atom or some variant into the upcoming Surface phone. I still hope it will be just that. 

[shdowhunt60]

1 minute ago, SansVarnic said:

Actually this was Microsoft's plan (from what I heard at least) is to possibly put Atom or some variant into the upcoming Surface phone. I still hope it will be just that. 

It should've been their plan for the start, but Microsoft got a case of shit to the brains, and forgot that the core reason for Windows' continued success is software compatibility.

[Trixanity]

Well, the x86 Surface phone everyone hoped for is officially dead now. 

 

Intel doomed themselves first with a gimped product, then a half-assed product and now it's canceled. 

 

I'm not surprised they canceled considering performance issues, price issues and market share issues. 

 

However it's still an odd timing considering that their latest was nearly ready to launch and they had already poured vast sums of money into an ever increasing hole that they failed to plug. Maybe this last attempt could have saved it. 

 

It seems though that their roadmap for Atom is unclear and that Apollo Lake is the last. 

 

So I guess they have little faith in Atom, its performance and its ability to compete. 

[tsk]

2 hours ago, Trixanity said:

 

It seems though that their roadmap for Atom is unclear and that Apollo Lake is the last. 

 

So I guess they have little faith in Atom, its performance and its ability to compete. 

I'm curios to see what happens to atom, I guess a lot will depend on how well the "cloudbooks", as Intel calls them, will preform. 

[AlTech]

10 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

This sucks, I was looking forward to see what Intel would bring to the table on this.....

 

3 hours ago, Trixanity said:

Well, the x86 Surface phone everyone hoped for is officially dead now. 

 

Intel doomed themselves first with a gimped product, then a half-assed product and now it's canceled. 

 

I'm not surprised they canceled considering performance issues, price issues and market share issues. 

 

However it's still an odd timing considering that their latest was nearly ready to launch and they had already poured vast sums of money into an ever increasing hole that they failed to plug. Maybe this last attempt could have saved it. 

 

It seems though that their roadmap for Atom is unclear and that Apollo Lake is the last. 

 

So I guess they have little faith in Atom, its performance and its ability to compete. 

 

10 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

Actually this was Microsoft's plan (from what I heard at least) is to possibly put Atom or some variant into the upcoming Surface phone. I still hope it will be just that. 

 

Microsoft being Microsoft means they have the money to change Intel's Mind. they'll probably use existing parts which are more highly binned.

 

Microsoft is supposedly ordering custom x86 SOCs for their upcoming surface phone.

 

Also Sofia was the codename for Intel's smartwatch thing they wanted to do. It was absolutely abysmal and has nothing to do with smartphones.

[LAwLz]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

Microsoft being Microsoft means they have the money to change Intel's Mind. they'll probably use existing parts which are more highly binned.

 

Microsoft is supposedly ordering custom x86 SOCs for their upcoming surface phone.

 

Also Sofia was the codename for Intel's smartwatch thing they wanted to do. It was absolutely abysmal and has nothing to do with smartphones.

No, SoFIA was not a smartwatch SoC. It was an Atom x3 with integrated LTE modem aimed at smartphones and tablets (if you want more details you can look up the x3-C3440).

 

I would be surprised if Microsoft released an x86 phone now that they have specifically said they are committed to ARM and Intel canceling their next generation SoCs (they also canceled Broxton, which was their going to be the successor to their current Airmont Atom processors.

 

 

10 hours ago, AlexGoesHigh said:

I blame OEM's on this, just look at the zenphone 2 almost everything SoC related was on par with the 808/805/810 which where qualcomm flagships at the time, that atom was a very capable chip.

 

dunno why OEM's never got to it, ZP2 was like 300$ and while the whole package wasn't perfect it was a freaking speed demon for the price on release. 

The only decent thing about the Atom used in the ZenPhone 2 was the CPU. Everything else was not that great compared to the competitors. The ZenPhone 2 also had poor battery life compared to the battery size, but it's hard to tell how much of the blame for that is on the screen and how much was the Atom chip.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

No, SoFIA was not a smartwatch SoC. It was an Atom x3 with integrated LTE modem aimed at smartphones and tablets (if you want more details you can look up the x3-C3440).

 

I would be surprised if Microsoft released an x86 phone now that they have specifically said they are committed to ARM and Intel canceling their next generation SoCs (they also canceled Broxton, which was their going to be the successor to their current Airmont Atom processors.

 

 

The only decent thing about the Atom used in the ZenPhone 2 was the CPU. Everything else was not that great compared to the competitors. The ZenPhone 2 also had poor battery life compared to the battery size, but it's hard to tell how much of the blame for that is on the screen and how much was the Atom chip.

So then how will they run Win32 apps on ARM Chips?

[Daegun]

But according to Patrickjp93 SoFIA was amazing and crushing everything else in its targeted segment. Why cancel something so successful?

[Shahnewaz]

So they ran out of Contra-Revenue money?

[patrickjp93]

21 minutes ago, Daegun said:

But according to Patrickjp93 SoFIA was amazing and crushing everything else in its targeted segment. Why cancel something so successful?

Performance wise, it does if you ignore Gekkbench. The problem has been perception based on a lie, and depending on what Nvidia can prove, possibly some very underhanded sales tactics by Qualcomm. The very fact Apple is using Intel's modem for some of the iPhone 7s is proof Intel has had the hardware to compete.

[patrickjp93]

20 minutes ago, Shahnewaz said:

So they ran out of Contra-Revenue money?

Intel running out of money? Are you nuts?

[LAwLz]

19 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

So then how will they run Win32 apps on ARM Chips?

Maybe it won't?

I can only see 3 possible outcomes for the Surface phone right now.

1) It uses an outdated chip that gets crushed by the competing ARM chips, but get Win32 support.

2) Microsoft gets a custom chip from Intel that is not Broxton or SoFIA, and it can run Win32 programs.

3) Microsoft keeps using ARM chips and they can't run Win32 programs.

 

Option 1 is really bad for obvious reasons.

Option 2 seems very unlikely.

[AlTech]

21 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Maybe it won't?

I can only see 3 possible outcomes for the Surface phone right now.

1) It uses an outdated chip that gets crushed by the competing ARM chips, but get Win32 support.

2) Microsoft gets a custom chip from Intel that is not Broxton or SoFIA, and it can run Win32 programs.

3) Microsoft keeps using ARM chips and they can't run Win32 programs.

 

Option 1 is really bad for obvious reasons.

Option 2 seems very unlikely.

They could also build an emulator.

[Shahnewaz]

46 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Intel running out of money? Are you nuts?

I didn't say just money. I said "Contra-Revenue money".

1 hour ago, Shahnewaz said:

So they ran out of Contra-Revenue money?

 

[patrickjp93]

7 minutes ago, Shahnewaz said:

I didn't say just money. I said "Contra-Revenue money".

 

Still really not possible.

[Shahnewaz]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

Still really not possible.

Not possible? Well then why are they cancelling Broxton and SoFIA, if the contra-revenue strategy was successful after all?

[LAwLz]

37 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

They could also build an emulator.

An emulator? That would be absolutely atrocious in terms of performance and/or compatibility.