“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.

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The 2015 Shenzhen Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) Developer Forum kicks off Tuesday, the second event Intel is hosting in the city.

Like its San Francisco counterpart, IDF Shenzhen was a very mobile-centric event. At last year’s event, Brian Krzanich, the company’s CEO, made some very aggressive promises.

But one year later, where is Intel on these promises?

40 Million Intel Tablets in 2014

Without a doubt the most aggressive promise Intel made at IDF Shenzhen 2014 was shipping 40 million Intel powered tablets in 2014.

The tablet SoC market is dominated by ARM’s (LON: ARM) silicon. To grow that much in one year would be a herculean task for any company, and many analysts thought it would be an impossible task. But in January 2015 Intel announced that it had met, and even beaten, its goal: 46 million.

But to get to that goal Intel paid a handsome cost that would be impossible for any of its competitors even consider undertaking. In its yearly earnings call in January Intel said that is mobile and communications division posted a loss of $4.21 billion for the 2014 fiscal year. Income for the division for the year was razor thin, only coming in at $202 million.

However for Intel this was total war. Posting this kind of loss was an acceptable cost for achieving victory.

This goal was intended to establish Intel Architecture in the marketplace,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said during the company’s earnings call. “We don’t need to go out and outpace the market for this year,” he continued. “A key goal for mobility is to improve profitability.”

This strategy pushed Intel’s x86 competitor out of the market entirely. Although AMD never really was a contender in the tablet space, the company decided to concede the market entirely once it realized the lengths Intel was willing to go to achieve dominance in the market.

“We’re evaluating [tablets] closely. It’s not our priority,” Kevin Lensing, senior director for mobility solutions at AMD, said in a November interview. Lensing explained that the margins just were not there for AMD to justify its attempts at entering the market, on top of Intel’s aggressive behavior.

Now that Intel has hit its goal, the question is: can it make a profit?

Intel’s $100 Million China Bet

The other big announcement from Intel at IDF Shenzhen 2014 was the establishment of a $100 million “China Smart Device Innovation Fund” and innovation center to help Chinese vendors jumpstart their mobile ambitions with Intel cash and know-how.

Tracking the deliverables surrounding this promise has been a bit tricky, as Intel’s bigger China-themed announcements this year such as the $1.5 billion investment in Tsinghua Unigroup have pushed it to the sidelines.

To date Intel has disbursed $28 million from the $100 million pot. The list of companies that have received the funds, and what projects they have used them for, has not been widely publicized.

It’s also understood that the company’s innovation center is not going as planned. Sources said Kirk Skaugen’s platform development center in Shenzhen was supposed to have 600 engineers, and to date it’s understood that there are only 150. In addition key high-level R&D personnel have returned to the United States.

What’s in store for this year?

This year’s IDF event is a much shorter affair than last year. With Intel no longer as hungry for market wins as it was last year, it’s doubtful that it will be as high profile as the year prior.

The conference’s first keynote kicks off Wednesday morning.

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