Intel Stops Mobile SoC Business

Intel Corporation, one of the globe’s highest valued and largest semiconductor chip maker headquartered in Santa Clara, California, has recently announced that they will be exiting the tablet mobile as well as smartphone SoC business as the company has decided to end its struggling Atom chip product family. The Intel Corporation made this announcement in early April as the company continues to progress with a significant restricting plan. Some of the discontinued products include the Cherry Trail, the Broxton, as well as the SoFIA.

The chip maker’s focus has begun to shift towards “Cloud, IoT, memory/programmable solutions, 5G and Moore’s Law,” suggested Brain Krzanich, the CEO of Intel Corporation, in his most recent blog. The resources that were previously focused on SoFIA/Broxton will now be transferred onto “products that deliver higher returns and advance our strategy,” according to a spokeswoman at Intel Corporation. The spokeswoman confirmed that effective immediately, the SoFIA 3GX, LTE, as well as LTE2 commercial platforms are cancelled. She also verified that effective immediately, the Broxton platform for tablets and phones has also been cancelled.

Intel Corporation’s plans to divert away from the mobile SOC battle seems to make sense, considering that there has been a gradual decrease in demand for both tablets and smartphones. Although, Intel Corporation is not giving up on its connectivity business. Many analysts have agreed that it makes sense for the Intel Corporation to shift its focus onto its 5G and modern technology efforts.

Only 18 months ago, Intel was trying to use alliances with Spreadtrum Communications and Rockchip to make deeper inroads in China where the smartphone market was then growing by leaps and bounds.

stated Junko Yoshida from EE Times.

With Spreadtrum, Intel made a $1.5 billion investment in Tsinghua Unigroup, resulting in the acquisition of 20 percent of China’s combined Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics. At that time, Intel appeared to be using Spreadtrum to pry open the Chinese market, asking Spreadtrum to market Intel’s SoFIA SoCs in addition to Spreadtrum’s own chips.