Intel’s CEO, Brian Krzanich, has been focusing on gaining a significant foothold in the mobile market for some time. While Intel currently dominates the PC business, a market that has somewhat surprisingly been on the uptick lately, he has recognized that the market for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets is critical to the company’s long-term success. He recently suggested that manufacturing partners Rockchip and Spreadtrum, who are currently manufacturing both Intel and ARM chips, would shift to Intel chips exclusively in the next couple of years.

ARM has dominated the overall smartphone and tablet chip markets. Market leaders Qualcomm and MediaTek have used an ARM-based architecture for some time, and dominated the high- and low-end chipset markets, respectively, for mobile electronic devices. Krzanich noted that with those two dominating the market at the moment, smaller chipmakers like Rockchip and Spreadtrum would have to differentiate significantly if they are to survive in the long term.

The real question facing Intel is this: are its solutions so much better than ARM’s that customers will demand them? Low-cost ARM-based chips dominate the market for Android tablets, in part due to a more compelling price-to-performance ratio. According to a report from JP Morgan, Intel may have to sell below cost to be competitive with those that TSMC rolls off of their lines. In fact, that is exactly what Intel has been doing, with success measured in a lot of red ink and modest gains in tablet and smartphone market share.

That said, Intel has partnered with both Rockchip and Spreadtrum to produce low-power SoCs based on Intel technology that may come to market as early as next year. Will it be enough to capture significant share from industry behemoth Qualcomm and its estimated 58 percent market share? Time will tell.