Intel: Hard Push in Mobile Internet Devices

The term mobile Internet device may have been first coined by Intel(INTC Quote), according to its chief competitor in the mobile space ARM Holdings(ARMH Quote). If Intel wasn't the first, the company certainly popularized the MID acronym in September's Intel Developer Forum.

Definitions of a MID vary even among manufacturers of processors such as Intel, ARM and Via Technologies, as well as among mobile device manufacturers. Clearly, these MIDs need to have access to the Internet and be mobile. But some definitions center on screen size, meaning that if it's larger than 8 inches diagonally, it's not a MID, it's a Netbook. No standards exist in the industry.

Simply put, MID is a marketing strategy initiated by Intel but now used universally to include the convergence of any consumer-oriented handheld devices with computing power connected to the Internet. Handheld devices commonly considered a MID are e-readers, game consoles, portable media players and GPS devices.

At the 2009 Intel Developer Forum, Intel demonstrated how serious it is about pushing its Atom-based SoC platforms into an increasing number of consumer product categories when Chief Executive Paul Otellini predicted "a future where Intel ships more SoC cores than standard PC cores." The company has more than a dozen 32nm SoCs in development using the Atom core and a common set of libraries and interconnect models, he said.

Is all that investment by Intel going to pay for itself? Just how big is the market for MID anyway? It's all in the definition. In our research for our report entitled "Intel Versus ARM in Mobile Devices and Netbooks/Smartbooks," we came across some startling analyses of the market.

We used a more-or-less industrywide definition (and again there is divergence in this definition, as I said) in which a MID as a portable device with an always-connectable Internet or area network connectivity, a maximum display of 8 inches in the diagonal dimension, and a full day's worth of battery life under typical usage scenarios. Since a smartphone fits this description, which most people agree upon (although some disagree an Apple(AAPL Quote) iPhone is a smartphone but we will for the sake of argument call an iPhone a smartphone), the entire MID market is nearly -- guess what -- smartphones.

Mobile Internet Device Market Forecast Thousands of Units 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Smartphone 139,200 170,659 185,336 222,403 284,965 365,040 Mobile Internet Devices 75 375 3,125 7,750 18,500 37,500 Total 139,275 171,034 188,461 230,153 303,465 402,540 Source: The Information Network