Intel Says 2008 Brings Only First Big Step toward ‘Internet in Your Pocket’
SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel wants to put “the whole Internet in your pocket,” said Anand Chandrasekher, the company’s senior vice president for its ultra mobility group. “It requires some major, major innovation,” he said. “It is not possible today.” To help get there, Intel plans by 2009 or 2010 to halve its component size and power use and to cut idle power use 90 percent, Chandrasekher said Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum. The Moorestown technology platform delivering that will bring portable devices great improvement in graphics, video and memory, he said.
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Meanwhile, though, telcos largely are missing out on a huge traffic opportunity from social networking alone, said Chandrasekher. Online social networks have a billion members, 154 million of them active daily, he said. Members spend 36 minutes a day on sites. But “this is all being done on PCs” -- 95 percent of it, anyway, Chandrasekher said. “This is not being done on handsets. This is not being done on phones.” Among owners of handsets that can browse the Web, 61 percent didn’t use them for that in the second quarter of 2007, he said.
For that to change, users need to be able to use any Web function with any mobile device, plus fast, reliable and inexpensive connections, Chandrasekher said. Developers need to be able write an application once to run anywhere, he said. Each version of Flash takes two years -- “an eternity on the Internet” -- to move from desktops to handhelds in a “lite” version, Chandrasekher said. Devices need high performance, and “you need always-on, always-connected” Internet access, he said.
Intel’s “imperatives” are low-powered, persistent connectivity through WiMAX, and enabling software innovation, Chandrasekher said. Reduced need for power lengthens battery life and shrinks products, he said. A motherboard with Intel’s Menlow platform, to reach market the first half of 2008, is 74 by 143 millimeters, about as big as a playing card, he said. As of next year the company’s chips will have cut power consumption more than 90 percent since 2005 while “maintaining performance and compatibility,” he said.
“Innovation momentum” is propelling mobile Internet devices, Chandrasekher said. He said companies aiming for 2008 product and service releases include NTT DoCoMo, LG, Clearwire, Samsung, Toshiba, NEC, Hitachi, KDDI and Fujitsu. They have gotten behind efforts by the six- month-old Mobile Internet Device Innovation Alliance, which Intel started with BenQ, Asus, High Tech Computer, Quanta, Elektrobit and Compal, Chandrasekher said. He took part in a demonstration with a Compal device.
“This is a really exciting time for consumer electronics,” said Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, who made a cameo appearance during Chandrasekher’s keynote. We're “reaching a price-performance point where you really can have the Internet in your pocket all the time,” he said. The key is Linux, “fundamentally an Internet operating system that is secure and reliable,” Shuttleworth said.