Intel CEO blamed for failure to address ultra-mobile market

Yesterday Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced he's retiring in May 2013 and it didn't take long before the web was awash with speculation on why he's leaving. One of the reasons cited by financial analysts for the early retirement of Otellini is his lack of growth in ultra mobile markets. He did a very good job in getting Intel ready for laptops, but failed to properly address the smartphone and tablet markets, which are primarily dominated by ARM-based chips.

The Register discusses how Intel's x86 everything strategy is to blame for this, you can read it over here.

In the middle of the last decade, Otellini knew that technology was going mobile and that ARM was then best suited, from a hardware perspective, to deliver greater mobility. He pledge to aggressively drive down Intel chips’ power consumption to a point where x86 processors could match the energy efficiency of ARM devices.

Eight years on from Otellini’s elevation to CEO, Intel can argue that it’s there. It has x86 in smartphones and, unlike previous attempts, they don’t deliver a much shorter battery life than ARM devices. The problem now, though, is that the rise of ARM in the interim has eroded the compatibility value of x86.