#Microprocessor giant #Intel 's(NASDAQ:INTC) organic efforts to build applications processors targeted at the smartphone market saw little success over the last five years or so. The company could never quite build chips that offered compelling enough performance, power consumption, and features to convince major smartphone manufacturers to adopt its solutions over, say, those of major players such as #Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), #MediaTek, and others. Although Intel is currently not an active participant in the smartphone applications processor market, the company has made it clear that it intends to continue to participate in it as a contract manufacturer for other chip designers. One such deal that's been publicly known about for quite some time is the tie-up between Intel and mobile processor maker #Spreadtrum. Though neither company has said much about the products that they will be building together, Digitimes has a very interesting scoop vis-a-vis this partnership. Products sampling soon, aiming for Samsung smartphones Digitimes says that Spreadtrum will begin "sample shipments" of its chips built in Intel's 14-nanometer manufacturing technology "starting in October." Spreadtrum is apparently "looking to grab orders for Samsung's mid-range smartphone series for 2017," according to Digitimes' "industry sources." Although winning spots inside of Samsung's mid-range phones is certainly not as glamorous as winning spots in the company's Galaxy S and Galaxy Note flagships, a significant portion of the smartphones that Samsung sells are low-end and mid-range handsets. Samsung tends to use many different suppliers for these mid-range and low-end phones (e.g. Samsung's own chips, Qualcomm, Spreadtrum, and reportedly soon MediaTek), so pricing is probably competitive and margins are likely relatively slim.
http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/06/intel-corporation-may-build-chips-for-mid-range-sa.aspx
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