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Intel and Nokia's Powerful Collaboration

As pointed out in a recent EETimes article, there was very little substance or specifics in the Intel-Nokia announcement. Intel does not have a good record trying to get into the wireless business, and in fact sold a major part of its assets in that area to Marvell. Nokia needs something more substantial than its wholly owned Symbian system, which can't deliver on many applications for smartbooks or netbooks (which are not the same).

The key issue is whether the Nokia-Intel combination can produce wireless devices that have low power requirements to compete with the Qualcomm SnapDragon chip, which is based on a lower power ARM processor. Unless one is simply playing games, a netbook or smartbook need to be on continuously, just the way a handset remains on, with sufficient battery power to make it through at least one day's usage. Intel's Atom chip certainly isn't there yet, though it might be in a few years. Meantime, chips from Qualcomm and others can fill the bill.