According to a presentation (PDF) given at the Barclays Capital Global Technology Conference 2010, Intel is going to be making a major push into the tablet market in 2011.
CEO Paul Otellini took to the stage and told attendees that the company planned to have more than 35 tablets on the market next year based on its Atom CPUs. A large number of these will be running some form of Microsoft Windows, but a significant proportion will run on Android or the company's own MeeGo mobile OS.
Otellini then rattled off more than 15 different partners who were working on devices, including heavyweights like Toshiba, Lenovo, ASUS, Dell, Acer and Fujitsu. He also pointed out that the devices would be spread across two product lines, with Windows-based tablets using the Oak Trail CPUs and the others being built on the Moorestown platform. Many of these are expected to be on display at CES in January before appearing at retail in the first months of the year.
Of course, we've heard this sort of rhetoric before from Intel. However, OEMs have been rumoured to be waiting for the Moorestown and Oak Trail platforms, which will offer better performance and lower power-draw than the previous chips in the Atom family.
It wasn't all good news, though. According to the Financial Times, Otellini reported that the company was still having some trouble integrating all of the necessary components into its next-generation smartphone/MID chip, codenamed Medfield. The company will be hoping that the SoC fares better than the previous generation processor, which launched earlier this year but failed to garner much interest.
"It's a marathon, not a sprint," he explained, adding that smartphones based on Intel's new silicon wouldn't start to appear until later in 2011, with more following in 2012.
