Intel-Android News Changes the Dynamics

Although we’ve been hearing bits and pieces about Android on Intel’s Moorestown platform over the last few months we’ve never really had it in writing from Intel. Today we have.

Almost hidden in the latter part of a Fact-Sheet (PDF)on the Moorestown / Z6xx launch today, Intel has this to say.

“As a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), Intel has worked with Google over the past few years and is providing support for the Android platform at launch. The performance characteristics of the Intel Atom processor Z6xx Series are reflected across Android implementations making it a compelling platform for a range of handheld devices. inch

Support for Moblin/MeeGo is also mentioned. Windows isn’t.

This changes the game somewhat in my opinion.

Firstly, Intel now has a non-Windows platform. Politically, that’s huge. This is probably the first Intel computing platform since Windows launched, that doesn’t support Windows!

Secondly, Intel have just pulled in support for one of the most interesting and developed ‘smart’ computing platforms there is. There’s no longer any need to convince customers that MeeGo is going to be great because the trust will already be there. What a set of brands Intel, Google, Android. You wonder what the long-term aim is for MeeGo now. How long will they continue with MeeGo if Android on Intel becomes successful.

Moorestown and Android could really be a killer combination and it already scales to netbook-like performance to enable some very interesting tablet, MID and ‘smart’ book devices. 1M iPads proves that this new market is ripe.

This could also explain why Google haven’t yet opened the marketplace for tablets and other large-format handheld devices.

Here’s a video we took of Android running on Moorestown recently.

Intel press release.