Intel Corp. on Wednesday formed a  giant mobile business division that will develop everything mobile or consumer, from smartphone to netebook and from tablet to set-top-box. The world's largest maker of chips hopes that the new über-division will help it to better address the rapidly expanding market of smartphones and tablets where the company's success has been limited so far.

In a bid to speed up development of solutions for the next-generation mobile computers, tablets, smartphones and consumer electronics, the chip giant decided to combine its netbook and tablets division, ultra mobility division, mobile communications division and the mobile wireless division into one mobile and communications group (MCG). The new mobile division will be able to more efficiently address the needs of the new mobile and consumer devices, according to Intel. The divisions will be more focused on working on reference designs, interoperability between components, software and so on, which will accelerate time-to-market of products powered by Intel's silicon.

"This is a strategic move designed to provide clear differentiation for Intel-based mobile devices and to speed and improve development of Intel-based mobile devices and components. The reorg also enables us to make maximum use of two executives - Hermann Eul and Mike Bell - who have strong track records in mobile devices," Robert Manetta, a spokesman for Intel, told X-bit labs.

^{Intel-based tablets shown at Computex 2011}

The development of microprocessor technologies as well as systems-on-chips based on those - the high-performance x86 "Core" processing cores for desktops, notebooks and servers as well as ultra low-power x86 "Atom" cores for netbooks, tablets and smartphones will be carried out by two other divisions within Intel architecture group.

Intel hopes that mobile platforms developed by one organization using specific computing, I/O and communication components will reach  the market faster and will provide better user experience than currently available standalone chips even formally compatible.

For Intel, the large mobile division makes tremendous sense. For a couple of years Intel has been trying to enter the market of smartphones and tablets and even demonstrated actual working devices. However, neither of those products eventually showed up on the mass market. The extremely tailored approach to mobile platforms, which will include hardware, software, reference designs, etc., should finally drive ultra-portable products with Intel inside to the market.

"MCG is specifically chartered with creating a compelling user experience by providing optimal hardware, software, and connectivity ingredients as well as complete solutions (form-factor reference designs, etc.) for phones, tablets and other mobile devices. MCG takes the CPU/SoC elements designed by the two development groups, then tailors them for specific needs and packages them with the surrounding hardware, software and communication elements," added Mr. Manetta.

Tags: Intel, Business, Atom, Android, Windows, Infineon, Core