BARCELONA — Chipmaker Intel will start production of its new “Menlow” chip platform, specially designed for Web browsing on mobile phones and other mobile Internet devices, in the next 90 days, it said on Wednesday.
Anand Chandrasekher, head of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, said the Menlow chip would improve consumers' experience of the mobile Internet by providing a single platform for software developers.
The aim is to make Web-browsing on a mobile phone similar to that on a computer, and do away with the frustrating and common experience of slow or non-functioning links and downloads.
“You cannot get the best Internet experience on a Blackberry
or even an iPhone. The technology hasn't been there,” Chandrasekher told Reuters in an interview at the Mobile World Congress wireless fair in Barcelona.
“At the moment, for each device developers want the mobile Internet to run on -- Blackberry, Motorola, HTC -- they need another port.”
He added: “Apple has done a brilliant engineering job to get around some of the shortcomings of the hardware.” He declined to say whether Apple, which is an Intel customer, planned to use Menlow in future versions of its iPhone.
Chandrasekher said he saw the addressable market for chip platforms such as Menlow reaching $10 billion by 2011. Intel, the world's biggest semiconductor company, has only one serious rival -- AMD.
He added that he saw Menlow potentially replacing chip platforms based on designs by ARM Holdings in devices such as smartphones -- phones with computer-like functions -- and mobile gaming consoles.
Intel will build its Menlow chips using its most advanced, 45-nanometre technology that it deploys at five plants around the world, Chandrasekher said.
