Can Intel chase the tablet?

The IDF 2014, which was held recently, attracted a lot of attention from the industry. Although at this IDF 2014, Intel released a large number of strategies, products, and solutions, there are many feelings of squandering for fascinating eyes, but the industry is most concerned about whether Intel can change in the mobile (smartphone and tablet) market. Possibility. To this end, Intel officially announced on this IDF the goal of shipping 40 million tablets this year. Can Intel achieve this goal? Where is the significance of achieving this goal?

Here we might as well look at the competitive characteristics of the current tablet market. According to IDC's relevant forecast, the growth rate of the tablet PC market will slow down this year, and its annual rate of increase will fall from 51.6% in 2013 to 19.4% this year. The reason is that the tablet PC hardware itself has been slowed down and upgraded. Reduced demand in mature markets. For tablet PCs, the rapid growth rate last year, according to Gartner's statement, mainly due to the user's price-sensitive low-cost but functional and experience the general choice of tablet computers.

According to the above analysis of IDC's slowdown in the growth of the computer market this year, the growth momentum of the tablet PC market this year is supposed to be low-cost tablet PCs for emerging markets. However, IDC stated that this year's growth in the low-cost, white-billed lithographic PC market will be The main reason for the slowdown is that users gradually shift to high-end tablets with higher quality and longer service life. Even in the low-price tablet PC market, the way it has grown this year and its products have changed. That is, Gartner said that price and size will not be the key to the success of the future Tablet PC market competition, functional diversity may be the focus of competition among major manufacturers in the future, even for cheap tablets.

Combining the development characteristics of the Tablet PC mentioned above this year, let's take a look at Intel's Tablet PC market strategy this year. Through this IDF, we know that Intel's 40 million shipments will come from most of the white companies in Shenzhen, China. It is a well-known fact that the biggest selling point of these white-label manufacturers in Shenzhen is price. In other words, the development center of Intel Tablet PC this year is still on the low-priced flat computer.

If we measure IDC's predictions on the development trend of tablet computers this year, Intel's strategy is somewhat contrarian. And Gartner's predictions, if last year's low-cost tablet PCs were only selling at low prices, this year's selling point was not only low prices, but also added user experience, then Intel put itself in a competition more than last year. For the fiery lithographic computer in the Red Sea. However, since last year, Intel’s annual flat panel shipments have reached 10 million units, and this year it has soared to 40 million. Looking at the slowdown in the growth rate of the low-priced flat-panel computer market and increasing competition difficulty, the difficulty of Intel’s 40 million targets can be overcome. And know.

Let's take a look at the competitors in the low-priced tablet market. As we all know, due to the low price, MediaTek's entry-level smart phone solutions such as MT6572, MT6575 and MT6577 are still very popular among cottage tablet manufacturers. With the dual-core processor becoming the mainstream configuration of the white card tablet market, MediaTek’s integrated processor (integrated application processor and baseband chip) is expected to exceed 8 million in shipments in the domestic whiteboard tablet market in the first quarter. In the second half of the year, it also hit a shipment target of 12 million units in the quarter.

To this end, DigitimesResearch expects that MediaTek's high integration of smart phones and tablet PCs and related solutions will be attractive to those cottage makers who have not yet tried MediaTek's solutions. With the continuous increase in the proportion of tablet PCs with phone functions in the total shipments of tablet PCs, MediaTek's solution will increase to 25% in the white tablet market in 2014. The share in 2013 increased by 10 percentage points. Of course, in addition to MediaTek's main rival, QuanZhi and Rockchip Microelectronics are also Intel's competitors in the low-priced tablet PC market. More importantly, the development model of the low-priced white tablet PC is far from Intel's longest.

From this point of view, Intel's market strategy for low-end tablet PCs has been copied by Shanzhai. After all, in the traditional PC industry, Intel relied on large brands such as Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Dell. Such an OEM partner could allow Intel to easily generate considerable revenues and profits, unlike today’s white-box vendors. It can't be said to be laborious, but the efficiency of the revenue is much lower. In fact, according to Intel's strategy of focusing on the white card in the tablet PC market, some people in the industry believe that it will be difficult for Intel to obtain significant revenue and profits.

According to the financial report, in fiscal year 2013, Intel’s operating profit was US$12.3 billion, a decrease of 16% from US$14.6 billion in fiscal year 2012. This is in addition to the weakness of the traditional PC market in which Intel’s profit core is located, and it is also unrelated to Intel’s efforts to create a low-end lithographic computer market (competitiveness with rivals). But even so, Intel seems to have missed the peak and best time for the development of the low-priced tablet PC market. This is why Intel chairman Andy Bryant said: "Intel had rejected the tablet market, which left a bane for us. Now we are paying the price." The main reason.

There is a saying in China: It was early morning and late set. For Intel, which is not too early, is it possible to catch up with the tablet market? Due to changes in market development trends and different rival competition models, Intel’s goal of achieving 40 million tablet PC shipments this year may be just like what Bryant said. It needs to continue to pay the price, but whether the price is worth it Intel should have an objective analysis and judgment on this.