No Intel Smartphones Until 2012

Intel CEO Paul Otellini had to deliver the news that the company won’t be coming out with smartphones in 2011, thanks to a major partnership with Nokia that dissolved in February. “We have freed up those resources and turned that design into a form factor/reference design. We’re shopping that now to a number of manufacturers … and we’ve had good success. You’ll see the first Intel-based phones (using new Medfield chips) in the market the first part of next year … in hindsight, Nokia was the wrong partner to have picked,” Otellini said.

Intel doesn’t want to pay royalties for using another companys ARM chip reference design for handheld devices. “There’s no advantage to be beholden to someone else, to pay royalties to them, which lowers our overall profits,” Otellini said. “We can do a better job if we filled out this continuum with IA (Intel’s own products). We have no intention to use our license again to build an ARM.”

As for Intel’s contributions to the burgeoning tablet PC market, Otellini said “there’s been so much written about tablets that I don’t know where to start, except to say we’re on track. We’re tracking 35 designs on multiple operating systems. Some are shipping now with Windows. We’re demonstrating some Android devices now. The tablet race is nowhere near finished. No one really knows the size of this market, but it’s real clear that everyone’s putting energy into it.”

Smart TV boxes are another hot market, Otellini said, especially in Europe, where Intel is shipping 10,000 units a day. “We are shipping nine versions of Smart TVs now, not all of which are Google TVs,” he said. “The centerpiece for Smart TV adoption now is in Europe, old-line Europe, it’s France and Italy,” he said.

Intel is projecting growth in not only processors made for servers, but also for networking, storage and peripherals.

Because businesses in China, Japan, Indonesia and other emerging markets have more capital to invest than they did only a decade ago, the future looks good for the chip business in those sectors.

It’s more, more and even more than that when it comes to projected growth in cloud systems over the next few years. Intel is gearing up for burgeoning demand, as these numbers attest.

The numbers get mind-boggling in this sector, with large enterprises, scientific labs, government agencies and other sectors clamoring for more processing power. The demand never slows down.

Shipped processors destined for storage arrays and other devices have doubled in the last six years, while the number of storage systems has multiplied at almost the same rate.

The company’s new MIC line of processors will take the multi-core concept to another level during the next 18 to 24 months.