First Intel-powered smartphone

Get ready for the first smartphone running on an Intel chip. That phone will likely be from Lava.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini couldn't have made it any clearer: The first smartphone to use an Intel processor is due "later this week."

"Expect to see another important milestone for our business later this week. The launch of the first Intel architecture-based smartphone," Otellini said during his opening remarks in today's first-quarter earnings conference call.

That phone will likely be from Lava, according to a India-based smartphone maker's plans.

Specifications include an Intel Z2460 Atom chip, a 4.03-inch screen (1024x600), 8MP camera, HSPA+, and 16GB flash memory (see chart).

Smartphones running on Intel processors from Lenovo, Orange, Motorola, and ZTE are also due soon. While the launch of Lenovo's K800 is imminent -- and probably the next Intel-based phone to become available -- all of the others are slated for later this summer or in the second half of the year.

Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, is trying to refocus its chip design and manufacturing efforts on smaller devices like smartphones and tablets, markets where it has been virtually absent.

specification

Intel maps out tablet plans

Intel's plans for tablets  and smartphones are crystallizing into a clear roadmap, as the chip giant begins to marshal its considerable chip design and manufacturing forces to address markets where it is not competitive--yet.
Intel is aiming its system-on-a-chip Atom at slim tablets like the Lenovo IdeaPad which had been demoed with an Intel Atom processor earlier in the year.

Intel is aiming its system-on-a-chip Atom at slim tablets like the Lenovo IdeaPad which had been demoed with an Intel Atom processor earlier in the year.

As tablets pour into national retailers like Staples and Best Buy, they are encroaching on shelf space occupied by laptops. Unlike laptops, however, tablets don't sport Intel silicon. Most notably, of course, Apple's iPad, which uses Apple's A5 chip. But Android tablets, too, from the likes of Motorola and Samsung, use chips mostly from Nvidia.

Intel, of course, would like to change that. Its first system-on-a-chip for tablets and smartphones--codenamed Medfield--will be a crucial component of that strategy, though chips that follow may be more important commercially. Medfield will arrive in the first half of 2012, followed by Clover Trail technology in the second half of 2012, Intel spoke.

Both of those chips will be better suited to the power sensitivities of tablets and smartphones and anything in between--the latter referred to as convertibles or hybrids. "Both Medfield and Clover Trail are targeted at tablet designs but could also be used as tablet hybrids," Ramirez said in an e-mail. Intel's move to Clover Trail was discussed at tech blog This Is My Next.