Motorola Xoom :: Will Intel Atom Join Android Tablet Market

With recent changes in the market for Android tablets, it appears there is speculation that Intel may be positioning tablets based on the Atom processor. While Honeycomb has not been fully adapted to the Atom, Intel demoed an Atom driven Android tablet in Bejing this week.Here is some of the article's key content:"So, with tablets based on chips from companies like Nvidia (Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab) and Texas Instruments (PlayBook) not likely flying off the shelf, are Intel's chances any better now? "The door to this market is open. The longer it takes for these other products to get rolling, the more opportunity there is for Intel," said Richard Shim, an analyst at DisplaySearch.

And others see an opening for the world's largest chipmaker. "Though Apple has set the bar, it's not going to be alone in this space. Right now it looks like Android will have the majority of tablet sales(outside of Apple), and Intel has a dedicated team of people to make Android work the best it can on its Atom chips. They have a lot of resources they can apply," said Jack Gold of consulting firm J.Gold Associates, who wrote about this yesterday.And Intel, despite its unimpressive start, has another advantage. Atom is not just another cookie-cutter design from U.K.-based ARM. Intel can bring to bear all of its manufacturing, security, and media processing know-how, according to Gold, who believes it will continue to whittle away successfully at the inherent power-efficiency advantage of ARM chips. "My take is that Intel can capture 20 to 25 percent of that remaining market outside of Apple."

Shim has a few words of caution, however. "It all depends, of course,how well Honeycomb (Android 3.0) runs on Atom," said Shim. "That's a big if." And Shim also warns Intel not to put too many eggs in the MeeGo basket, which is a hard sell to developers in a field crowded with Hewlett-Packard's WebOS and RIM's QNX, in addition to Android." url...What do you think about the possibility of Intel Atom competing with the Tegra 2 processor for Android tablet marketshare? If Google has to support mutliple tablet processors with Honeycomb and eventually Ice cream, will that create more bottlenecks or opportunities and options?