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.
There is a pivotal shift within the global smartphone market. Recent data from IDC highlights a more cautious outlook for 2025, with projected worldwide smartphone shipments seeing a significantly reduced growth rate. This revised forecast underscores the intricate interplay of global economic factors and geopolitical dynamics on pervasive personal communication devices. IDC's latest update projects a mere 0.6 percent growth in worldwide smartphone shipments for 2025, a stark reduction from the earlier 2.3 percent expectation. Global Smartphone Market Development This recalibration is largely attributed to prevailing economic uncertainties, including inflationary pressures and rising unemployment, alongside the persistent specter of tariff volatility. Despite these global tensions, it's interesting to note that the United States and China are still identified as the primary drivers of this modest growth. China, a critical market, is forecast to achieve a 3 percent year-over-yea...