Intel CEO Paul Otellini caught everyone by surprised on Monday night at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona by presenting a top end smartphone. Prior to that, almost nobody knew Intel designs phones.Like many traditional tech companies, Intel was caught by surprised by the rise of smartphones. The two most popular mobile platforms today, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS, sell globally, but neither runs anything Intel makes. Android device producers choose from an array of chipmakers and Apple contracts its in-house designed CPUs to manufacturers in Asia. Intel tried to convince others that its CPU’s are mobile compatible, but it yielded little result. As a continuation of its effort, Intel started to hire several hundred engineers specializing in smartphones and started a group dedicated to mobility inside its Silicon Valley base. The executive who heads the group, Mike Bell, is a 17-year Apple veteran and had worked on iPhone projects previously. So going forward, it’s a question of how well its chips work with phones, not whether or not the chips can work.
