Intel lags far behind rivals in smartphones and tablet manufacturing

November 22, according to Reuters, Intel's chief Executive (CEO) Blaine Col (Krzanich) said in Thursday that the company will expand its foundry manufacturing business so that more chip manufacturers can enjoy Intel's world-leading chip manufacturing technology.

Intel lags far behind rivals in smartphones and tablet manufacturing, and many on Wall Street have urged Intel to expand its foundry business to develop its own factories to customers with large demand for mobile chips. The current foundry manufacturing business contributes very little to Intel's revenue.

He said Intel's tablet chip supply had improved in the six months he took office and vowed to raise the company's tablet chip supply by four times times by 2014. The price of Intel tablet chips ranges from 100 to 400 dollars.

For Intel, helping other companies with OEM chips will be a huge change. For decades, Intel, the king of the PC chip industry, has been using its own factories to make its own PC chips, and these chips are much better than their rivals ' offerings. But in the mobile era, Intel has been slow to transition, and now the smartphone and tablet market has been seized by Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics.

Hans Mosesmann, an investment bank Raymond James analyst Hans Mossman, said in a report to investors that Intel's actions could have a huge impact on the industry as a whole. Eventually Intel could be a competitor for OEM chips, such as the graphics chip maker Nvidia, and even the king of the mobile chip manufacturing industry.

The current OEM chip for these companies is China's Taiwan's integrable Circuit Manufacturing Co.

Earlier this year, Paul Otellini, Intel's last chief executive, had reached an agreement with Altera to chip the latter. Altera is a Silicon Valley programmable chip manufacturer that has no competitive relationship with Intel. It is the deal that the company is expected to expand its foundry business gradually, with forecasts that Intel may also be working for Apple's OEM iphone or ipad chip, which is Samsung for Apple's OEM.