The year of mobility

The silicon manufacturer made no qualms about its support for mobility, which it believes will be a major market force this year. Between notebooks, palmtops, and its high-end network and server chips, the desktop was all but ignored at this year`s Spring IDF (Intel Developer Forum) in San Francisco.

Having wireless network connectivity is pointless if you still need to be plugged in to the wall for juice.

Jason Norwood-Young, technology editor, ITWeb

In a way it`s quite a bold move for a company that made its name in the desktop space. Then again, if anyone knows that the PC market has become commoditised, it`s Intel. The US market has achieved 60% penetration of the PC, and selling these guys two machines - Intel`s drive last year with it`s home networking products - is not a great long-term strategy.

The notebook, however, offers a whole bundle of opportunity. First of all, you can still charge a premium for notebook technology, although this is changing fast. Secondly, you can make some fairly safe bets as to what will drive notebook sales. Intel believes that wireless networking is the single factor that it needs to focus on to get notebooks into the hands of the consumer. Thirdly, hardly anyone has one, and those that do can`t live without it.

Price is another major factor, but one that Intel seems unwilling or unable to address. Fortunately for the chip manufacturer, price is sure to come down as volumes increase. The biggest cost is still the TFT display, but we can expect the chaps in the Far East to innovatively tackle this problem if they see the demand.

There are a couple of other detractors holding the mobile revolution back. The first is power. The atrocious lack of battery life on an average notebook will become more noticeable as wireless increases in importance. Having wireless network connectivity is pointless if you still need to be plugged in to the wall for juice. Ironically, Intel has very little control over this, as the biggest power-muncher in a notebook is the screen, accounting for almost 50% of power consumption. The battery manufacturers could also pull their weight, as they have been managing only a 5% to 7% improvement in battery life a year.

Another problem is the form factor. Notebooks are generally heavy, bulky, unwieldy devices. There are some great new models coming down the line, but these should have been delivered a year ago if the market was to seriously adopt them this year.

Although Intel is making a valiant effort to push everyone in the right direction, with numerous standards bodies and product concepts to show the market, it can only do so much. It may be the brains of the notebook, and the notebook industry, but it is not the brawn.