Reuters is reporting that European cell phone carrier Orange will be selling a reference design Medfield smartphone under the Intel brand name. The Atom Z2460 SoC will find its first major distributor to be one of the world’s largest service providers – this could potentially be a big opening for Intel in a market it desperately wants to compete for.
I find it very interesting that not only has Intel developed a processor that has finally garnered attention for the mobile market but the team at Intel has built a reference design that was fine tuned enough to direct sell to consumers. Will the company avoid becoming a typical, low margin SoC company by focusing on vertical implementations like this one? It is an interesting thought and no other vendor has really done it, with possibly the exception of Samsung that owns the entire device process already.
Anandtech has the major specifications of the phone, codenamed "Santa Clara":
These are basically identical to the reference design we saw at CES with only some minor changes to the form factor. Ice Cream Sandwich isn’t included out the gate but we are hoping the upgrade will get pushed soon since Intel showed ICS on the Atom SoC in January.
I haven’t been able to find anything about availability or pricing yet but I’ll be sure to report it when I find it. The mobile market continues to intrigue…
