BEIJING, Oct. 28 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- CCID Consulting, China's leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, and the first Chinese consulting firm listed in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: HK08235), released its article on Intel MID.
In April, 2007, Intel launched its latest processor chip ATOM for the first time, and put forward the product concept of MID (Mobile Internet Device). Since then, Intel has cooperated with willing partners in the industry chain to carry through the R&D of MID products.
Obviously, the purpose of Intel promoting MID products is to further enlarge its processor products' sales. In recent years, Intel has held a leading advantage in the processor market, from 180nm, 135nm to 90nm, 65nm, 45nm, 32nm and 18nm; from single core to dual core, quad core and multi core. Because of Intel's continuous innovation, its processors' performances and technologies have improved, so Intel has acquired generous market returns, while at the same time driving the development of the whole semiconductor industry. However, with technical and physical limits approaching and with requirements for processor chips changing, -- especially the requirements for traditional PC's gradual saturation –- the processor chip market has slow growth potential and the market's profits are thin. These challenges will drive Intel to upgrade its products.
In recent years, Intel UMPC, Desktop, Classmate PC and MID are Intel's horizontal exploration in processor services: Through mining requirements from market segments, Intel is attempting to start with terminal products' specific patterns and develop processor chips that are suited with those products so as to enrich its own product lines and harness terminal products' sales to help drive the overall processor product market.
Great expectations have been laid on MID. However, the market has faded and there have been cold reactions to UMPC and Classmate PC, so MID takes on more important responsibility and significance for the company. If MID can achieve their anticipated results, it will become an important breakthrough for Intel processor products' horizontal development. MID is not only a new product, but Intel's attempt to transform the processor business entirely.
What about MID products' status?
MID focuses on ubiquitous Internet applications, which have high requirements for wireless Internet environments; however, goals for global wireless Internet built out, especially China's wireless Internet construction status, aren't optimistic: By the end of 2007, China had less than 10,000 WiFi hot; GPRS bandwidth's limitation restricts customers' Internet experiences; and Wimax is difficult to realize large-scale, which provides the best mobile Internet's experience. Also, MID's portability challenges Atom chip's energy consumption: Currently, MID sample's standby time is less than six hours, which is a large inconvenience in smart phones. And MID's software compatibility and network content updating still need to be improved. Considering cost, most MIDs will adopt Linux and other open source OS in the future, but providers will still need time to develop Linux's related application software and network content. Therefore, products' software's and hardware's performance breakthroughs and application environment's improvements become the first threshold of MID.
Intel's development chain is the biggest advantage of their product promotion. Lenovo, Samsung, ASUS and Founder have all expressed that they would like to carry through with the developments that are based on Intel Atom MID, but Huaqi launched MID in July, 2008. However, Huaqi hasn't been able to carry through large-scale production and sale. Because of the MP3/MP4 market's recession and GPS's muddle, any new product is an opportunity. MID is no exception. As the major force of MID's promotion, the PC industry's behavior is reasonable -- MID has more in common with small size and portable notebook computers' functions, characteristics and consumer orientation, so its appearance will feed off of the PC market. PC manufacturers can't enlarge their market share against MID in the short-term, and MID will increase PC manufacturers' R&D and operation costs. MID products' promotion runs into a dilemma with the upstream of the industry chain.
Meanwhile, VIA, Nvidia and ARM are paying strategic attention to MID; they are actively optimizing their chip products so as to be more suitable to MID products' applications and developments. Under such circumstances, if Intel's MID products don't provide new breakthroughs, Intel and its industrial partners' pre-promotion and payments will have been wasted. It is forecasted that Intel MID's development will face new challenges, but based on past performance, we should respect Intel's persistent pursual for the ideal.
About CCID Consulting
CCID Consulting Co., Ltd. (hereinafter known as CCID Consulting), the first Chinese consulting firm listed in the Growth Enterprise Market of the Stock Exchange (GEM) of Hong Kong (stock code: 8235.HK), is directly affiliated with China Center for Information Industry Development (hereinafter known as CCID Group). Headquartered in Beijing, CCID Consulting has so far set up branch offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Chengdu, with over 300 professional consultants after many years of development. The company's business scope has covered over 200 large and medium-sized cities in China.
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