Intel Medfield Z2460: Motorola and Lenovo partners

Officially announcing the arrival of the Intel Medfield processors in their mobile products, Intel has found some privileged partners with Motorola Mobility (Google) and the Chinese Lenovo. Product launches are expected in the second half of 2012.

Intel has finally unveiled their new generation of processors aimed specifically at mobile devices, notably tablets, by showing off the first member of the Medfield platform with the Atom Z2460 processor.

This will be used as the base on which they will try and re-enter the market that they left in 2006 (at the time of PDA’s) and which their competitor ARM now has a stranglehold on. After a lot of work to make up for lost time in missing the smartphone revolution, the chipset manufacturer is now ready to take off.

In a market that is already highly competitive with ARM, it is necessary to build on some partnerships. Intel has therefore taken advantage of the CES 2012 show to announce two strategic partnerships, one with Motorola Mobility and the other with Chinese Lenovo.

This will allow them to jointly develop Atom Medfield/Android combinations which will be available in both smartphones and tactile tablets over the coming years. Intel is of course pushing the performance of their Atom Z2460 processor, but it’s the energy consummation which is the critical element in assuring wide spread adoption of the technology. From this point of view, ARM could still hold a slight advantage for a while yet.

Intel indicates that they are working directly with Motorola in a range of fields, both hardware and software, to provide a credible alternative to ARM products currently on the market. The first results of this will be seen in the second half of 2012.


Also partners with Lenovo
Intel has also teamed up with Lenovo for the first handset powered by the Intel Atom Z2460, the Lenovo K800, which is expected for release in China in the second half of 2012. The device will run Android and will come with the Lenovo LeOS tactile layer, with its distribution being assured by China Unicom and their WCDMA network with HSPA+ 21 Mbps compatibility.

Finally, Paul Otellini, Intel CEO, and Michael Bell, manager of the vast mobile division put together by Intel in December 2011; have demonstrated a smartphone of reference (Reference Design) running Android, powered by an Atom Medfield processor with a 4" display and 8 mega pixel camera lens.

This is until the big battle to takes place, with the arrival of Windows 8 tablets, for which Intel will release an optimised Atom Clover Trail processor later in the year.

Lenovo K800 powered by Intel Medfield (source: The Verge)