Intel Archives - Serious Startups

CTIA 2012: Video Intel Android Powered Orange “Santa Clara” Phone

Back in February at Mobile World Congress it was announced that Orange would be one of the first, if not the first, to bring an Intel powered Android device to market. Presently just Lenovo and Orange have Android phones with Intel’s Z2640 processor ready to go.

We saw the first Intel reference design in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and now we’re starting to see the phones emerging from that design.

Orange has been packaging phones under their own brand for years. Now they are looking to release a few smartphones under the Orange label. Orange has turned to Intel to power a new phone called the Orange “Santa Clara” smartphone.

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#CES2012 Intel, Ultrabooks, Isis, and Gemalto: is this the year of NFC?

Our good friend Sylvie Barak was quoted on the Gemalto blog

Intel demos NFC on an ultrabook: tap your credit card on your laptop touchpad to pay. #AWESOME #CES #eet_CES

Personally I don’t see making payments with a laptop being an option that many people would adopt. Bringing the ability for retailers, small businesses, or the average consumer to accept payments via built-in NFC hardware is an entirely different matter. We have already begun to witness the downfall of the traditional payment options and watched as first PayPal then Square knocked down the payment barriers.

With Google Wallet and Isis using NFC payments and PayPal by phone at Home Depot stores (without NFC) and NFC payments in Sweden it is clear we have almost arrived at a new paradigm in the ability to accept payments. When your smartphone can act as a terminal for both positive and negative cash flow, without any additional hardware, the benefits will market themselves.

Last year I heard over and over “2011 is the year of NFC (in the U.S.)” beginning at CES. I was not clear on why people were making that statement at the time. If I remember correctly, there were no high-profile devices announced in Las Vegas last year. The Nexus S had been announced in November the previous year, sure, but that was it. There was extremely limited NFC functionality for the end-user at the time.

Intel Backs Urban Airship

Two weeks ago Urban Airship, that specializes in shaping engagement for mobile app developers across multiple platforms announced that they have completed a 15 million dollar round of financing. That round, was led by big names like Salesforce and Verizon. Today it was revealed that Intel also participated in that round of financing.

In addition to the capital investment from Intel Capital, Urban Airship also announced that they’ve entered into a business collaboration agreement with Intel’s Software and Services Group. In this agreement Urban Airship will help developers who’ve already partnered with Intel to provide superior engagement services, push notifications and app infrastructure for those developers.

“The top app companies look to Urban Airship for help shaping the most engaging user experience onmobile,” said Lisa Lambert, vice president, Intel Capital. “We are well aligned with Urban and they help us bring even more value to developers creating apps for the users of millions of Intel® Atom™ processor-based devices.”

“Our mission is to shape mobile experiences that are constantly getting smarter, more fun and more useful,” said Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton. “Working with Intel lets us extend our influence beyond smartphones and into the fast-growing markets for tablets and netbooks.”