Android to be optimised for Intel’s Atom chips

Chip manufacturer Intel is teaming up with Google to ensure that future releases of the Android operating system are optimised for Intel’s Atom processors.

Intel said that it wants to step up its efforts in the lucrative smartphone arena at the opening keynote of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. President and CEO Paul Otellini, alongside Google’s senior vice president of mobile Andy Rubin, discussed the Intel’s recent efforts to accelerate its smartphone business and showcased a form factor reference design based on Intel Atom processor, and running the Android platform.

The joint effort is designed to speed time-to-market of Intel technology-based smartphones running on the Android platform.

“The unprecedented demand for computing from the client devices to the cloud is creating significant opportunity for the industry,” said Otellini.

“Our collaboration with Google will bring a powerful new capability to market that helps accelerate industry innovation, adoption and choice. I’m excited about the new experiences that will be created across a range of devices, and we’re just getting started.”

The announcement builds on previous agreements that the two have had to enable Intel architecture on Google products, such as Chrome OS, Google TV and the Android Software Development Kit (SDK).