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Intel Stakes Out a Wide Swath in the 5G World
There’s a fault line in the coming world of 5G, and it falls pretty much between the radios.
On one side, ARM and a vast range of partners are all over the trillion expected Internet of Things (IoT) devices out at the periphery — all the smartcams, doorbells, store beacons, fitness trackers, earbuds, home hubs, home robots, motion detectors, smart locks, voice controllers, thermostats, smart lights, smoke alarms, smart plugs, pollution monitors, smart switches, highway beacons, smart sensors, medical monitors, building monitors, in-car systems, and many more. By virtue of its relentless focus on low power consumption, the ARM ecosystem stands to inherit the market for the myriad devices on the outer ring. These devices, able to deliver a package of computing and communications that fits the stingy constraints at the far end, will thrive on this parsimony, right up through the highly-integrated 5G radio.
At the other end of that radio, however, Intel comes into its own. People with only a casual acquaintance with Intel’s 5G story may remember that the company sold its 5G modem effort to Apple after being soundly bested by Qualcomm in a head-to-head battle to supply 5G radios to smartphone suppliers. But all along, Intel has been building up its position at the other end of that radio link. At the network edge, where all that information from…
