Intel wireless act a risky high wire endeavour

Source: The Inquirer

UNTIL THIS YEAR, Intel did not make radio chips. Now, it is not only planning to make them for Centrino, but to develop a whole new class of digital radios based on silicon, which would be small enough to be incorporated into all devices and could combine Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular (and their successors) in one low cost system.
This is only the latest in a whole series of plans designed to make Intel as dominant in wireless and mobile as it is in PCs. But is even a company of Intel’s scale biting off too much this time? It is competing on an awful lot of fronts with the specialists, and already Centrino has come in for some criticism for delivering lower performance than its rivals. Better to combine Intel’s Pentium with wireless chipsets from the experts, goes the line. And by deciding to make everything at home, Intel is alienating all the third party chipset makers with whom it has had an understanding - if sometimes an uneasy one - all these years.

Then Intel is moving into cellphone chips as well with the XScale architecture. Its strategy for operator and developer alliances is sound, but now Intel is taking on a whole new range of powerful rivals, opening up a new battle front, as if competing for the high end server with Itanium were not enough. Not enough to challenge IBM, let’s take on Texas Instruments and Motorola in cellphones and Intersil, Cisco and Broadcom in WLans too. None of these companies will surrender ground happily or easily.