How Intel's Atom Will Recreate the iPhone/iPod Touch Class of Products
The problem with all of the smartphones, including the iPhone, is they try very hard to have laptop-like capability but all fall short. The two leading products are the RIM (Nasdaq: RIMM) Latest News about Research In Motion BlackBerry and the Apple iPhone.
These two products define two distinctive roles (BlackBerry for business and iPhone for fun) and most folks would probably like one product that could do both. For the BlackBerry, it is e-mail, contact management and calendaring that cause it to win in its segment. For the iPhone, it is music, video and a wonderful browser (plus great marketing and a great user experience). Neither of the products is particularly good at what the other does, which is why both did very well last year.
Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft Mobile platform comes close to what BlackBerry provided (generally only falling short on hardware right now and actually a better economic choice) but still falls short of the user experience provided by the iPhone. Depending on the hardware, it does provide a blend. Right now, however, even the HTC Touch (which sold half as much as the iPhone) or the HTC TyTN II, which is arguably closer to the ideal, don't get the excitement that seems to surround either the BlackBerry or the iPhone.
The iPod touch, which could be -- but isn't -- the perfect BlackBerry accessory to create the perfect solution, showcases a product class that better focuses on connected entertainment but it still falls short of the ideal.
What Intel's Atom platform promises in either its standalone or Centrino configurations is a product that could do what each of these products individually does well in a single small offering.
This will put power in your pocket that has only been seen in laptop computers and could turn the iPhone and iPod touch into pocket Macs.
I'm not sure we yet realize just how revolutionary this will be because the existing providers have done an amazing job of working around the limitations of the existing technology and getting stuff that probably shouldn't work to work reasonably well.
The iPhone and iPod touch are nearly impossibly good, but once we can move to an x86 technology base -- which is what Atom promises -- the limitations go away and this should be like taking square wheels off of racing car in terms of what will be possible once this platform hits the market next year.
This should also create stronger competition, but so far only Apple and RIM seem to get that, to be successful, you have to have great hardware, a great and complete user experience (including the back end), and strong demand-generating marketing. The last two things seem to be lost on a lot of vendors right now.
I think the result of Atom for small computers, smartphones and entertainment devices will be as revolutionary as the personal computer initially was and well worth looking forward to.
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