Nokia May Use Intel Chips

A last-minute leak this past evening would have Nokia use Intel processors for the first time in some of its devices. One unnamed source for Bloomberg claims that an announcement could come as early as this morning from Intel senior mobility VP Anand Chandrasekher that it has landed a deal to supply chips to Nokia. What this would entail isn't evident, though it would almost certainly involve a variant of the Atom processor and likely wouldn't be a complete replacement of Nokia's line.

Rumors have circulated that Nokia will produce a netbook and that the Finnish company has been debating between using Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, which would use the familiar ARM architecture that Nokia depends on for virtually all its products, or else switching to Intel processors. The choice would be appropriate for current-generation Atom processors as they currently use too much power to be useful in hardware smaller than mobile Internet devices (MIDs) or netbooks.

Future Atom processors in the Moorestown family, due in 2010, will be small and power-efficient enough to be used in smartphones by merging many of the features that normally need discrete chipsets into the main processor. No cellphone manufacturers have so far been announced for the improved design.

An Intel win could be crucial for restoring confidence in the company, which took a rare shock in its last quarter as it lost market share to AMD for the first time in many months.

By Electronista Staff

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Intel, computers, industry, Nokia, Qualcomm, Moorestown, ARM, Atom, mobile phones, Snapdragon