Intel
had some wild product ideas that were duds, like the OnCue TV streaming
service, WiMax and smartphone chips. Now, more products are likely to
be axed as the company looks to a post-PC world
The chipmaker promised last month to review and cut some products as part of a restructuring plan that included cutting 12,000 jobs.
The Atom smartphone chips were the first to go while Intel redirects
resources to profitable products in areas like servers, 5G connectivity,
gaming PCs and hybrid devices.
Strategies have changed dramatically in the past few years, with new approaches like consolidating your
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Here are some products that could get the boot:
۱٫ Itanium chips
The once-powerful Itanium server chip is
likely on its way out sooner than expected. Its user base is dwindling,
and Intel has been openly wooing customers to move over to its x86 Xeon
chips. A future Itanium chip code-named Kittson is expected in the
coming years, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise — one of Intel’s few
Itanium clients — has said it will keep Itanium servers on its roadmap until 2025.
Complications aside, Intel may try to
minimize the chip development and manufacturing resources it commits to
Itanium. Intel did not respond to requests for comment on Itanium’s
future.
۲٫ Education tablets and PCs
Intel formed an education group in the 2000s with the aim of competing with the upstart One Laptop Per Child
project, which took the world by storm with its low-cost XO laptop. The
group was peddling alternative low-cost netbook reference designs to
small PC makers making laptops for schools. The effort later expanded to
include convertible devices and tablets running Windows or Android.
Tablets and laptops are now cheap and sophisticated enough to replace these specialized PCs, with Chromebooks leading the way.
۳٫ Maker boards
Intel is good at making drones, robots and
other cool stuff inside its labs, but the company has failed to engage
the do-it-yourself maker community at large. CEO Brian Krzanich
perceives himself as a maker and enthusiast, but his vision hasn’t
translated to the maker community, which makes cool products using
boards like Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone instead of Intel’s Edison or
Galileo.
If not now, some Intel boards may ultimately get the boot. But the button-sized Curie
board, aimed at wearables, and the latest Arduino 101, which could
replace Galileo, may help expose Intel technology to makers who are
developing devices for the fast-growing Internet of Things market.
Intel is trying its best to attract makers through Maker Faires, board giveaways, competitions like Make It Wearable, and through TV show America’s Greatest Makers, on which Krzanich is a judge.
۴٫ Wi-Di
Intel provides its own wireless display
technology called Wi-Di to connect laptops directly to large screens. It
didn’t work out in living rooms, so the company is targeting the
technology at meeting rooms. But similar technologies like Miracast,
which can work across devices, are now becoming standard in PC, display,
and video streaming products.
Google’s Chromecast is versatile and
renders Wi-Di irrelevant. Emerging wireless technologies like WiGig,
which is much faster than Wi-Fi, will also carry wireless display
signals to high-definition screens.
۵٫ Atom chips for servers
Intel hasn’t updated its Atom chip for servers
since 2013. Atom chips aren’t being updated anymore for smartphones and
tablets, and they could be discontinued for servers as well. The chips
were originally intended for microservers, where the low-end Xeon E3
and Xeon-D series of chips are taking over as more powerful
alternatives.
But if ARM, which designs chips based on a
competing architecture, poses a serious server threat in the coming
years, Atom could be reintroduced in data centers
