While Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is said to be in “transition”, moving into new markets like mobile and the Internet of Things, at the end of the day it still is reliant on its Personal Computing division to drive the company forward.

For the past two years this division has been somewhat neglected as its growth was near stagnant, making it take a back seat to the expanding divisions of mobile and IoT. Intel’s controversial contra revenue program, where it effectively gave away or paid vendors to use its silicon, convinced both established giants such as Asus (TPE: 2357) and dozens of little-known smartphone and tablet vendors from Shenzhen to give Intel a chance over ARM (LON:ARM).

Fast forward to 2015 and things are once again shifting. As Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in the company’s January earnings call, the contra revenue program is over as Intel has established the Intel Architecture as a viable competitor in the mobile marketplace.

Now Intel wants to convince these same second and third-tier Chinese vendors to transition to produce PCs, and plans to help them with design. These PCs could be anything from traditional desktops, to all-in-ones, to two-in-one notebook/tablet hybrids. Intel already has a “turnkey program” for smartphones and tablets, effectively a ‘recipe book’ to help OEMs and ODMs build customized devices from reference designs and get them to market, and it’s expanding a similar program to the PC market.

“It’s no fun selling $59 and $99 solutions to the market,” Intel’s Kirk Skaugen, the company’s VP of Client Computing, said on stage in Shenzhen. “As the companies become more sophisticated, we’ll help them move to PCs.”

The turnkey program worked exceptionally well for Intel in mobile, and if executed properly there’s no question that a similar program for the PC space would work well. To quantify the success of the program in mobile, Julie Coppernoll, an executive in the company’s Mobile and Communications division, said during a briefing that 48% of all Intel tablets came from the turnkey program.

On stage at IDF Shenzhen, Intel had out dozens of PCs from Shenzhen vendors that it hopes will be a disruptive force in the PC market with its support. The majority of the companies with products on stage were unknowns, which will keep them from moving up the value chain into higher-margin markets in the West — a necessity should they want to grow.

The post IDF Shenzhen 2015: Intel’s Next Growth Strategy appeared first on VR World.

“Innovating together, winning together.”

That’s how Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) CEO Brian Krzanich defined the relationship between Intel and China during the kickoff keynote of IDF Shenzhen 2015.

“Since last year, we’ve made a lot of progress together. It’s been a good year full of innovation and full of partnerships and collaborations together,” Krzanich said on stage.

Though interference from the US government may block Intel from parts of the lucrative high-performance computing market in China, on stage Krzanich said that Intel and China maintain a strong relationship and high levels of cooperation.

“The local and global impact of our 50 years of Moore’s Law innovation and 30 years of strong collaboration and winning together in China is unmatched,” said Krzanich. “Intel remains focused on delivering leadership products and technologies in traditional areas of computing, while also investing in new areas and entrepreneurs – students, makers and developers – to find and fuel future generations of innovation with China.”

Krzanich began the keynote by highlighting the how Intel met or beat its goals from last year.

In terms of Intel’s goal to hit 40 million tablets shipped with Intel silicon inside, that goal was met and exceeded as the company announced in January as Intel says it hit not only the 40 million mark, but exceeded initial estimates by hitting 46 million.

With regards to the Smart Device Innovation Fund established last year, Intel said that so far it has been “very successful” with $37 million of the $100 million fund disbursed so far. Many of the companies highlighted by Intel as recipients of the funds are relatively unknown outside of China. Eyesmart technology, Appscomm, were some of the firms highlighted by Intel.

Updates on collaboration with Rockchip

At last year’s IDF Shenzhen, Krzanich gave a first preview of SoFIA its first SoC solution with an embedded 3G baseband. SoFIA was Intel’s plan to get a foothold into the value-oriented Chinese market.

Later in the year Intel announced that it would be collaborating with China’s Rockchip to further develop SoFIA, with Rockchip taking the lead.

Rockchip CEO Min Li

On stage at IDF Shenzhen, Krzanich and Rockchip’s CEO said that they had scored hardware wins from from 20 companies, with more than 45 tablet, phablet and smartphone designs currently in development based on the Intel Atom x3 processor reference designs.

Krzanich then demonstrated the Intel Atom x3 processor in a smartphone, supporting LTE-TDD connectivity over China Mobile’s network by streaming a song from a popular Chinese music streaming service.

A new fund for makers

Following in the footsteps of the Intel Innovation Fund for smartphone and tablet vendors, Intel announced a program to accelerate the development of maker projects powered by Intel’s Galileo and Edison platforms. It’s not clear how these funds will be disbursed, but Intel said it is investing $20 million (120 million RMB) into the project.

Real Sense gets thinner and an enterprise partner

Intel’s RealSense technology has been a favourite staple of the company during its keynotes at events like IDF and Computex. While Intel has secured a handful of wins for its 3D camera, interest from vendors has otherwise been scant. One of the few wins Intel was able to secure for the technology was the Dell Venue 7000, which had many other selling points other than the inclusion of the camera.

At this year’s IDF Shenzhen Intel announced that it had developed a new version of the camera that’s thinner and lighter than the previous version.

Intel also announced that China online mega retailer JD.com would be using Intel RealSense technology in its wharehouses to organize and sort supplies into boxes.

IDF Shenzhen 2015 continues through Wednesday and Thursday in Shenzhen.

The post IDF Shenzhen 2015: Intel Celebrates 30 Years in China at IDF Shenzhen appeared first on VR World.