Intel's Mobile Change Of Plans

In a move to streamline business and combat dismal mobile financial results, Intel will merge its mobile and PC divisions in early 2015.

The Mobile and Communications Group reported a $1 billion operating loss in the third quarter of 2014, with a $1 million revenue drop year-over-year. The mobile chip group will join Intel's profitable PC Client Group -- which saw a 6% increase in revenue to $9.2 billion in the third quarter -- under PC Group VP Kirk Skaugen.

"The lines between the products are getting blurred. Phones are becoming phablets, tablets are becoming two-in-ones. The processors going into those two products are crossing lines," Intel spokesperson Chuck Mulloy told EE Times. "The [mobile] market isn't standing still waiting for us to catch up. It made sense … that we start treating these as a spectrum of products rather than point products."

Intel's Core-M is being used in some tablets in place of its mobile Atom processor because the architectures are similar, Mulloy noted. The company will continue to see its PC chips scale down for mobile as its mobile chips scale up, he said.

Intel leads the non-Apple tablet processor market with its Core-M. Kevin Krewell of Tirias Research suspects that combining the Core-M and Atom divisions “will do a better job of rationalizing which goes into which segment."

Read the rest of this story on EE Times.