Intel's plans for Atom x3 in IoT/wearables, bargain smartphones

At its Developer Forum in Shenzhen, China, Intel Corp. executives made a big play for Chinese companies and developers as part of a strategy for future efforts in smartphones, wearables and the Internet of Things or IoT.

In his keynote address, CEO Brian Krzanich stressed the need for Intel and the developer community to provide leading-edge technologies to China across a range of products and industries – from data center to PC, and mobile devices to wearables, as well as the IoT.

But other than a few more details about its roadmap for expansion of the Intel Atom x3 (codenamed SoFIA) processors into a wide range of connected devices, much of what the company talked about was future expectations and partnerships and how important Chinese companies and developers were to its long term efforts in this area.

Like the smartphone/tablet-oriented Atom x3 cores introduced at Mobile World Congress, the new purpose-built IoT versions revealed to Chinese developers also have built-in 3G and LTE baseband. However, they will be ruggedized for affordable, outdoor, long-range sensor device networks beyond the range of what traditional WiFi-based networking solutions offer.

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