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The new strategy of the giant chip maker Intel Corporation that is gearing its business to the three new territories included Internet devices (netbook/notebook/smart-phone); embedded system; and consumer electronic (CE) will open the huge opportunities for Thai software development.

Intel aims to create the significant impact in these three market areas within 2012. At that time, Intel will produce and shift its smaller CPU to provide computing power to these devices in all three segments.

Under Intel’s roadmap, it is to extend Intel architecture into three market segments by deliver high volume of mobile Internet device (MID) and smart phone by 2012. In embedded system and consumer electronics markets, Intel also aims to play an important role by providing Intel architectures to accelerate the embedded transformation with intelligent architecture (AI) and will shift high volume of Intel computing platform into CE devices.

The move of Intel is significantly open up rooms for software companies to easily develop applications to plug-in Intel’s computing platform equipped in these three new areas.

Intel Microelectronics (Thailand)’s country manager Accharas Ouysinprasert said that the move of Intel offers opportunities for software developers by allow them to easier develop application software which run on Intel computing platform on PC and laptop devices, and then port these applications to run onto smaller devices that required a little bit of customizations.

“This move will broaden market landscape for software developers and to allow them to improve their time-to-market when they develop software for other devices such the smart phone and CE devices,” said Accharas.

Intel Atom processor is expected to play an important role when Intel entering into these three markets. The introduction of the Intel Atom processor makes the x86 architecture become a viable contender as a low-power embedded platform. Currently, the x86 architecture is ubiquitous among desktop and notebook computers, as well as a growing majority among servers and workstations.

“A large amount of software supports the platform, including OSes such as MS-DOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, and Mac OS X. The architecture is relatively uncommon in embedded systems, and low-cost niches such as home appliances and toys lack any significant x86 presence. This is the huge opportunities for software developers around the world including Thai developers,” said Accharas.

He added that these three markets are the huge opportunities since the year 2010 due to the launch of Intel Atom II processor (the next generation of Atom platforms and formerly code-named ‘Pine Trail’) that will change the total eco-system of gadget development as it will reduce time-to-market from 1 or 2 years to be less than 6 months.

“Most of time-to-market of Internet devices, smart phone, products equipped with embedded system, and CE devices are about software and application development. The come of Intel Atom II processor will help software developers reduce times of software development,” said Accharas.

Meanwhile, hardware market in Thailand this year is also expected to return to normal growth at 20 per cent. Accharas added that two major factors drive IT-market growth this year are included the Intel Core i series central processing units (CPUs) – the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 – and Microsoft’s Windows 7, the latest version of the ubiquitous operating system. Both of them will create a big impact on the corporate and consumer IT markets.

The huge IT purchases this year were expected in the corporate segment due to the change of core technologies – both operating systems and CPUs – and a rise in the “refreshment cycle”, after companies had slowed their IT-replacement programmes for two years because of the economic crisis.

As well, there is a rapid increase in Internet usage, a widespread expansion of social networking and cloud computing, which is leading to big IT purchases of data centres, he said. These trends are not only occurring in the Thai market, but also throughout the world.

“These factors also encourage Thailand’s IT market to grow throughout this year,’ said Accharas.