Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar) on February 1, 2013 4:41 pm wrote:
> anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on January 31, 2013 4:59 pm wrote:
> > > (especially since the "premium"
> > > smartphone/tablet market is already occupied by Apple, which has its own cores
> > > and chips).
> >
> > Well that all sounds pretty implausible. Apple only "occupies" premium tablet
> > market. Smartphone is much more competitive. And the situation is not likely
> > to stay the same on the timescale you are talking about (5-8 years).
>
>
> That's a fair criticism, but look at it this way. Apple and Samsung produce
> at least half the smartphones and tablets shipping worldwide.

So what? Intel could fab for Apple, and Android market is very fluid. Samsung does very well because they have good devices, not because they have some kind of monopoly on consumers. Only a few years ago, the Anroid market looked very different.

>
> Apple does its own designs, even doing its own cores now, narrowly targeted to the products it sells.
> It is unlikely to be satisfied with purchasing over the counter parts from Intel that are designed to
> satisfy the needs of a wide range of customers, which would be available to anyone. If they were, they
> wouldn't have even done the A4, let alone the A6, and would buy Snapdragon SoCs like everyone else.
>
> Samsung isn't doing its own cores, but it designs its own SoCs using standard ARM cores and has its own fabs.
> It will want the volume of chips going into the smartphones and tablets it sells to be produced in those
> fabs to help depreciate them and provide funding to keep on the Moore's Law train. Why give Intel that volume
> and money? The bigger Samsung's market share gets, the less sense buying from Intel makes, even assuming
> Intel is eventually able to leverage their process advantage into a performance advantage.
>
> The window of opportunity for Android devices to sell on performance is probably closing.

Better manufacturing is more than just about performance. Cost and energy efficiency.

> Ditto for battery life. Beyond a day's use for a smartphone it is nice to have but not a critical factor for
> very many people (if it was, there would be more phones like the Razr Maxx) The main benefit of better battery
> life is that it lets you make a thinner, lighter phone.

And cheaper. Exactly. What is not to like about that?

The screen and cellular/GPS/wifi/bluetooth radios take
> a larger and larger portion of the battery as screens get bigger and we go from 3G to LTE to LTE Advanced and
> so on, making CPU efficiency less and less important to overall device battery life as time goes on.

Although important enough for Apple to buy a design team and start doing their own CPUs. Clearly they believe there is room for long term differentiation.