At the opening of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Paul S. Otellini unveiled Intel's next-generation, power-optimized micro-architecture for future digital home, enterprise, mobile and emerging market platforms -- and low-power products that will enable a new category of converged consumer devices. Intel will introduce a micro-architecture in the second half of 2006, that combines the company's current Intel NetBurst and Pentium M micro-architectures and adds new features. "We will deliver factor of 10 breakthroughs to a variety of platforms that can reduce energy consumption tenfold or bring 10 times the performance of today's products. At the same time, Intel innovation will continue to deliver unique digital enterprise, home, office and mobile features, such as greater manageability, security and virtualization, along with an increasing capability to manage and view digital content," Otellini said. Intel currently has more than 10 processor projects that contain four (quad-core) or more processor cores per chip. Otellini also announced that forthcoming lower-power products will lead to a new category of ultra energy-efficient Handtop PC devices that provide a converged communication and PC-like experience but require less than a watt of processing power and weigh under a pound.
The global smartphone market closed 2025 with a story less about recovery and more about transformation. Premium product, ecosystem lock-in, and manufacturing scale are now the forces shaping competition. For business and technology leaders, the latest IDC market study data confirms that smartphones remain a critical indicator of consumer demand, supply chain health, and AI commercialization at the edge. Smartphone Market Development Global smartphone shipments grew 2.3 percent year-over-year in Q4 2025, reaching 336.3 million units and bringing full-year volumes to 1.26 billion units — a modest 1.9 percent annual increase, according to IDC. This smartphone growth emerged despite a memory shortage crisis, tariff volatility, supply chain disruption, and macroeconomic headwinds. What stabilized demand? Two factors: sustained growth in premium devices and strong foldable momentum, combined with accelerated purchases as consumers bought ahead of anticipated price increases. Buyers weren...