Intel Has Android ICS Running on Smartphones, Tablets

An article published by PC World indicates that Intel-based Android tablets and smartphones could become available sometime in 2012.

PC World quoted Alec Gefrides, head of the Google Program Office at Intel, stating that Medfield may be combined with Android versions 2.3, 3.x and 4.0. According to Gefrides, Intel is offering Medfield drivers to smartphone and tablet makers at this time. Intel continues to work with Google to make sure Android runs well on its processors.

Intel has been trying to prep its Atom processors since mid-2008, when the company told us that it would not mind if Apple would choose its Atom processor as a future CPU for its phones. However, the company has been struggling to gain support among device makers and has yet to announce a major vendor that is willing to use Intel processors for smartphones. The collaboration with Google is critical for Intel to show credibility as a foundation for possible design wins in the future.

Last week, the developers of the Android-x86 project announced that they succeeded in getting Android 4 to run on AMD's Brazos platform and that they were still working to achieve the same result on Intel chips. Developer Chih-Wei Huang told PC World that Intel ignores their requests for support. Gefrides commented on the note that his company "has to focus resources on building products, not experiments."