Qualcomm's former co-president, Venkata "Murthy" Renduchintala has established himself as a number two in Chipzilla and appears to be the chap in charge of firing and closing down Intel’s mobile division. Ironically taking Intel out of any competition with Qualcomm for mobile.
Renduchintala is telling the world that the Internet of Things space is really cool and Intel is in a good position to own the space. This is of course if that pesky Qualcomm does not get in the way. Qualcomm has the advantage that the Internet of Stuff is still “mobile” where it is king and it has not had to pay $25 million for an executive who wants to fire 12,000 staff.
Renduchintala wrote:
Today, connectivity is defined by people connecting to other people and to the cloud primarily through mobile devices — smartphones, PCs, tablets and the like. In the future we will add more than 50 billion smart and connected devices, machines, autonomous vehicles, buildings and cities. These devices will be always on and connected, and demand the greatest data bandwidth possible.
...With this revolution, definitions also change. This is true for mobile. No longer just phones, mobile is now about connecting the billions of "things" — inclusive of phones, tablets and PCs. Intel is creating the next wave of world-class connectivity assets — LTE and 5G modems, RF, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet — needed to power devices, networking and storage. We're aligning our products and architectures to an entire panorama of smart and connected devices, and in so doing we're enabling exciting new experiences. We are not exiting mobile, but we are broadening its definition to make it synonymous with the interconnectedness of the more than 50 billion "things."
...With decades of experience in creating open ecosystems, powering the world's PCs and servers, and embedding intelligence into unexpected devices, Intel is uniquely positioned to deliver the comprehensive portfolio of end-to-end hardware and software technologies for this revolution.
Renduchintala's comments make it clear that it sees the IoT business, although tiny relative to Intel's overall revenue, as the answer.
"I know that we'll win in the connectivity revolution fuelled by the IoT," he wrote.
If someone paid me $25 million I would say something like that. Hell for that amount of money I would say that Apple had a future and was a great and innovative company. Still it would be cheaper to pay for Apple to buy a hitman, so I am not holding my breath.
