Intel Scraps Broxton SoC

Following lower-than-projected earnings last quarter, which marked a huge drop from its record 2015 Q4 revenues, Intel has announced that it is pulling the plug on its Broxton Atom SoC processor family. Broxton was pitched by Intel as its entry into the high-end mobile processor market, competing against the likes of ARM and NVIDIA with its Cortex and Tegra chips, respectively.

Intel released the following statement on the matter (via AnandTech):

“Intel is accelerating its transformation from a PC company to one that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices. We will intensify our investments to fuel the virtuous cycle of growth in the data center, IoT, memory and FPGA businesses, and to drive more profitable mobile and PC businesses. Intel delivers a broad range of computing and connectivity technologies that are foundational to this strategy and that position us well to lead the end-to-end transition to 5G. Our connectivity strategy includes increased investment in wired and wireless communications technology for connecting all things, devices and people to the cloud, and to power the communications infrastructure behind it. We re-evaluated projects to better align to this strategy.

I can confirm that the changes included canceling the Broxton platform as well as SoFIA 3GX, SoFIA LTE and SoFIA LTE2 commercial platforms to enable us to move resources to products that deliver higher returns and advance our strategy. These changes are effective immediately.”

The move is surprising given the current market climate; hardware manufacturers have been moving into mobile devices, following a huge market shift over the last half-decade, with Intel seen as having missed the boat thus far. While the death of Broxton might have been motivated by short-term financial concerns – it is worth noting that Intel’s mobile division lost $3.1 billion in 2013 and $4.2 billion in 2014, according to Fudzilla – further delays in entering the mobile processor market could have a detrimental effect on Intel’s future growth.