US CPU giant Intel sought to position itself as a key player in the next telecoms eras by focusing on topics such as 5G and IoT at its big developer conference.

Historically IDF (Intel developer conference) has focused on Intel’s CPU roadmap, and that’s still where Intel derives most of its revenue. But since Intel formed at dedicated IoT business group in 2013 the company has increasingly looked to focus on areas of diversification. Intel tried and largely failed to become a handset chip player, and is determined to do a better job with IoT.

In a session entitled ‘IoT + big data insights’, the GM of Intel’s IoT group Doug Davis and the GM of its data center group Diane Bryant sought to explore the opportunity offered by IoT and to emphasise that much of its success will depend on how the data derived from all these connected things is used.

Intel has expanded its IoT developer programme in a bid to be associated with innovation in this still nascent sector, as well as a new developer kit to help developers commercialise their bright ideas.

“The introduction of the Intel IoT Commercial Developer Kit is part of that evolution, to provide a complete scalable solution for IoT developers that enables a path from prototype to product that is more streamlined and is easy to innovate,” blogged Bill Pearson, director of Intel’s IoT developer programme. “The kit includes an Intel Galileo Board, a variety of sensors, and Wind River software. Intel IoT Commercial Developer Kits combine an end to end solution of APIs, security, cloud connectivity, and IDEs to meet the needs of developers.

“Cloud analytics is an ever increasing function within IoT development.  With new services coming online regularly the kit is designed to scale to a variety of data enabling needs. The kit provides access to sample code for connecting to 3rd party cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix and more.”

Moving onto 5G, Intel also introduced a Network Builders Fast Track programme, which is more of a cluster of investment activities designed  to accelerate network innovation and interoperability, involving the likes of Nokia, Ericsson, Verizon, NTT Docomo and SK Telecom. Intel’s main interest in 5G right now is in convergent areas such as SDN as well as the cloud and any way in which 5G is going to rely on the data center.