Intel's new partnerships and processors for the mobile space

Visa partnership and modem integration
In terms of the partnership with Visa, analysts were divided, with Gold saying he felt it was important if it was related to NFC, while Jim McGregor of In-Stat remained skeptical.

“It expands on the relationship they have with Visa on the PC platform for its IPT and security capabilities, so this is a maturing of the relationship,” said Gold adding that while NFC is likely not going to take off quickly, it none the less is important to have the capability built in.

“I don't know if the alliance with Visa is that important yet,” said McGregor, noting that the financial industry still needed to settle on some consistent standards, but that eventually the silicon would require some security technology integrated for a truly secure platform.

Intel also wrapped up  its announcements by announcing its plans for three new smartphone SoC products, spanning from the performance to value segments of the market.

The firm said it would even be extending the performance of its Atom processor up to 2GHz with the Z2460 (Medfield).

“So will the ARM platforms but you can't clock them that fast and still have battery life,” said McGregor, adding that it would also be interesting to see how a single-core hyperthreaded Atom stacked up against a quad-core ARM A9 or a dual core A15.

“We don't know yet, but battery life is a very critical issue for consumers,” he said.

One interesting feature of the upcoming chips, however, is that Intel is beginning to leverage its Infineon acquisition to get more placements of modems. “Once Intel couples this with the Atom on an SoC, it should help greatly with their OEMs and expand their markets,” said Gold.

Intel said the Atom Z2580 with advanced multimode LTE/3G/2G would sample in the second half of the year with customer products scheduled in the first half of 2013.