There’s absolutely no denying that Samsung are at the top of the Android pile right now, their smartphones have been selling ridiculously well the last two years and compared to everyone else, it looks like they’re the only one making money off of Android. One area that even Samsung isn’t doing spectacularly in, is tablets. The tablet market is growing at a rapid pace and yet Samsung can’t seem to swallow up the market like they have with smartphones. Rumors are swirling that Samsung is about to release their latest line-up of Galaxy Tabs next month, and among fears that Samsung’s chips aren’t moving as fast as they want them to, it’s a wonder where they’re going to get their processors from.
When it comes to the upcoming 10-inch Galaxy Tab, the South Korean giant could well be looking to Intel and their new Haswell chips. Both Reuters and the Korea Times are stating that Samsung have intent to use an Intel chip. With the Korea Times claiming and Intel have entered a partnership which would see an x86-based Intel chip used in “at least one version of the Galaxy Tab 3”. It’s possible that this means a WiFi only version of the tablet, with 3G and 4G versions falling back to Qualcomm. Apparently, Intel have increased their amount of Atom engineers in Korea by around 50-percent in order to facilitate this partnership with Samsung.
This could be mutually beneficial for both parties, Intel need to make a big splash in the mobile market if they hope to become successful and what better way to do that than with a Samsung product? For Samsung, they’re looking to diversify their chips used in their product portfolio and having another partner like Intel onboard would take the weight off of their shoulders.
Intel’s Clover Trail+ platform is a powerful one and it’s not as if anything has to be done to Android in order to get things working properly, Android 4.1 is fully compatible with x86 and most Android applications will run just fine. Would an Intel-powered tablet be something you’re interested in?
[Sources: Reuters, Korea Times]