14 DAY TRIAL // It’s no secret Intel has big plans when it comes to tablet chips shipments for this year. The tech giant made public its intention of selling 40 million slate processors throughout 2014.
But this week, Intel reported its quarterly earnings and while the company beat Wall Street’s estimates, revenue dropped a bit from the same period in 2013.
And for the first time ever, the company revealed the figures for its mobile division, but news are not really encouraging in that department. The total revenue for Q1 2014 amounted to just $156 / €113 million, with an operating loss of a huge $929 / €672 million, reports NDTV.
But Intel is actually barely starting to move things along in this department and the revenue loss might be explained simply by the chip giant’s strategy. Intel is currently heavily subsidizing its chips in an attempt to persuade more and more smartphone and tablet makers to use its chips.
For the moment, it’s too early to tell, if the strategy will have the counted long-turn effects or will continue to induce the company to lose money, as Intel is trying to challenge the lofty ARM mobile space.
Despite the disappointing sales numbers, Intel continues to look positive towards the future. Chief Executive Officer Brain Krzanich announces the company has shipped a total of 5 million tablet chips in Q1 2014.
In 2013, Intel managed to ship 10 million tablet chips, so the company believes it is on the right track for reaching its 40 million goal it set for itself.
Intel Financial Officer Stacy Smith was asked whether the company expects these mobile chips to be deployed in lower-end laptops, instead of tablets. Judging by her answer, it appears Intel is dead-set to stick and focus on tablets.
“We mean 40 million tablets with Intel chips in them by the end of this year, with the majority of those being Android-based tablets.”
Intel is also increasingly interested in being part of another developing market, which includes wearable devices as diverse as smartwatches and smart clothes.
Anyway, Intel’s second wave of low-cost, low-power Bay Trail-T power is in the pipe-line. The most powerful new chip that’s expected to arrive is the Intel Atom Z3795, a 1.6GHz quad-core chip with maximum clock speeds of 2.39GHz and GPU speeds between 311MHz and 778MHz fitted with 4GB of RAM.
Intel also promises Windows 8 tablets with a $99 / €72 price tag, but it remains to be seen if the tech giant will meet its goal, in the end.