Intel has had a good deal of trouble in recent years in penetrating the smartphone and tablet markets. The semiconductor giant has been selling its processers near or below cost in order to gain market share, with little success and a lot of red ink to show for it.

A report in Digitimes, though, may indicate that Intel is finally gaining traction in the white-box tablet market. According to BIOS designer Insyde Software, an Intel partner has reportedly said that it has seen “strong orders” for Intel-based tablet BIOS software recently, an indicator that the company’s shift into Android tablets may be starting to work. This supports Strategy Analytics' report which named Intel as the second-largest Apps processor for tablets in Q2 2014, leapfrogging Qualcomm. According to the report, Intel doubled its tablet chip shipments from Q1.

Part of the reason may simply be Intel's pricing, along with its Rockchip marketing partnership starting to bear fruit. On the other hand, it may be a renewed focus on Android. Intel recently released an Android reference design tablet for developers. This tablet will allow developers to use a single, Google-approved hardware and software base to create their Android tablets using the reference design as a base.

In addition, the company has committed to keeping the software up-to-date, receiving the latest updates no later than two weeks after release. "What we've done with Google is defined a list of components," Intel's Doug Fisher explained. "And then Intel builds a complete operating environment, a complete stack on top of that device," he added.