The firm's CES 2012 keynote hosted by CEO Paul Otellini saw Intel launch a new 'hands on' strategy, with Lenovo set to deliver the first smartphone based entirely on Intel architecture in China.
Lenovo over LG
It was Lenovo's K800 that dominated much of Otellini's talk, however, following an assertion by the CEO that it's the smartphone market that's now defines the modern era of the personal computer.
The 4.5-inch K800 will come equipped with Intel's new Atom Z2460 chip (formally known as Medfield), 8MP camera, and will run Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, shipping Q2 2012.
It's a device that's being solely targeted at China, however China Unicom the sole carrier cited - with no release in the US or Europe mentioned.
No mention was made of any rumoured partnership with LG, either: instead, these markets, it appears, will be left in the hands of Motorola, which announced a multi-year, multi-device strategic agreement with Intel.
Optimising for Android
Combined with the Lenovo announcement, Otellini's speech suggested Intel is no longer happy to sit and wait for OEMs to adopt its architecture.
Rather, the company is now intent on muscling in on ARM's market share, making available what was billed as the 'best implementation of Android on the planet'.
Otellini claimed Intel is determined to offer an optimised Android experience to consumers building on Google's vow to tailor the OS for Intel's processors while the company's "application enablement engineers" are set to aid developers so their games run best on Intel-equipped handsets.
And Intel's tablet drive made up a portion of the firm's keynote with Windows 8 rather than Android the focus.
The company also demonstrated the ability to use an Intel phones to control games running on Atom-based UltraBooks - in this case using an accelerometer for a flying game.
[source: Intel]
