Considering how important smartphones are these days, you might be a little surprised
that more companies haven't tried to market their own. And perhaps none is more surprising than
Intel, especially as they're one of the world's biggest producers of both semiconductors and
networking equipment. So why doesn't Intel have its own line of phones? Well, you can learn more
about why they specifically don't make CPUs for phones right up here, but it turns out that they
actually did have their own line of actual phones not all that long ago. Back in 2011,
when my age still started with a 2, Intel announced it would try its hand at bringing
a smartphone to market with a processor codamed Medfield. Our sister channel Linus Tech Tips
actually looked at it back at CES 2013 and it seemed like a capable little device,
with reviews comparing it favorably to the then current iPhone 4s.
Intel's phones were interesting not just because they were, well, from Intel,
but they were also powered by an x86 processor, the same architecture you can find in your full
fat desktop PC. The idea was that by equipping phones with CPUs more capable than the more common
ARM chips, Intel could deliver better performance at a lower price, especially as Intel already had
literal decades of experience producing x86 chips for the mass market. The idea was that Intel had
a full-fledged reference design for an entire phone built around the Medfield CPU. Intel then
ended up partnering with cell providers in the UK and in India to get these phones distributed.
However, these gadgets were never popular enough to propel Intel into the minds of consumers
as a viable choice for phones, but why not? The reason is that Intel was rather
late to the smartphone party as it were, which is also part of the reason they still don't even
make processors for phones, let alone entire devices. Long story short, Intel's corporate
strategy for a long time was to focus on one core product, and that was processors for personal
computers, not smaller mobile devices. Intel simply failed to recognize the potential of the
mobile market until the iPhone was already the coolest thing on the block, and by then,
the portion of the market that wasn't controlled by Apple was quickly being eaten up by ARM-based
Android phones. Making matters worse was that when Medfield phones finally did arrive on the
scene in 2012, Intel was using technology that wasn't particularly compelling next to its competitors.
The phones were still using 3G technology even though this was around the time that LTE really
started to take off. The iPhone 5, for example, came out the same year, representing the first
iPhone that supported LTE. Although Intel did intend to put LTE in subsequent phones,
they were in a poor position because they didn't offer it from the get-go. So
then you have the fact that Intel's phones were designed to be
mid-range products, meaning that they didn't really have a flagship to make themselves stand out.
Think about how Samsung, for example, has multiple smartphone lines,
but has gained consumer familiarity through its high-end Galaxy S series.
One more thing, Intel also struggled to find partners to manufacture Medfield devices. You see,
Intel was notorious in the industry for charging rather high amounts to manufacturers
who use its chips. They were able to get away with this with PC companies as Intel had dominated
the desktop CPU market for so long, but contracting phone manufacturers to build Intel phones was
more difficult, as they didn't want to pay Intel tons of money for the privilege,
and major players who did have money like Samsung,
while they didn't have any desire to seed control over the intellectual property
inside their phones to Intel. The result of all this is that Intel never really got a
foothold in the mobile market, and although they did end up making smartphone modems that
allowed them to connect to cell networks, they even sold that part of the company to Apple just
last year. So I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes it just doesn't make sense to
show up fashionably late. The cool kids may have already left and made billions of dollars
selling phones that people actually want. So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this video,
give it a thumbs up, get subscribed, and be sure to hit us up in the comments section
with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future.