Listening to Intel VP Anand Chandrasekher warm up for his Digital Life keynote is a much more succinct experience than what his actual speech will inevitably be.
"I'll tell a story here," says Chandrasekher. "Dah dah dah dah dah."
Chandrasekher sat down with Wired News in a Javits Center green room before he gave his speech to talk about his new "ULTRA Mobility" group within Intel, formed to focus on portable, palm-sized devices and in-car connection to what Chandrasekher dubs the "Royal Internet," an internet not restricted by low throughput wireless data and slow mobile processors.
It sounds a lot like what every other technology company and cellular provider has been talking about for half-a-decade: Finding new ways to put your content - and content you're going to buy - in mobile devices.
But Intel doesn't sell devices, we note, and question how more power-efficient gadgets and WiMax-class bandwidth is going to change the way we interact with our media on a human level. Chandrasekher clearly recognizes there's an interface issue, but his example of a problem scenario - buying a movie ticket from you in-car interface - is one that dozens of other products and services can already address. And even if they can't do it as slickly as Intel's concepts, it's likely they'll be able to before Intel's 2008 implementation date for these technologies.
Technologies that Intel won't actually be selling, in end-product form, themselves.
Chandrasekher mentions his work in years past leading Intel's
Centrino group, talking about a 150 million dollar "ecosystem building"
investment built around Wi-Fi hotspots. The Centrino was a great branding and technology success for Intel, but I question the intimation that without Intel's backing, Wi-Fi would not have taken off. Chandrasekher, not-so-grudgingly, agrees.
(It should be noted that WiMax, developed and championed by Intel, is much more their baby than Wi-Fi could ever have been. Their
"ecosystem building" will definitely be more critical with WiMax. A recently announced partnership with Clearwire and Sprint won't hurt.)
A new partnership with Yahoo! is to be announced, pushing Yahoo's content onto ViiV-enabled PCs, as well as portable devices. (Sony's
Ultra Mobile PC is being used as a demo unit.) A Volkswagen Passat is on the stage, signifier of a new partnership with the German automaker.
In the pre-show warm-up, it comes to light that the test platform couldn't suck down GPS information in Manhattan because of interference from the buildings, so the demo is loaded with San Francisco data.
Chandrasekher kills that part of the demo entirely. Instead, the demo focuses on syncing up the content from the UMPC to the screens inside the Passat and streaming audio from Yahoo's music services.
By 2008, Intel's chips and architecture, coupled with wireless broadband, will allow you to watch mobile content on the royal internet. While I don't doubt that being able to stream internet radio stations and download podcasts via WiMax in my car will be neat, it's just a creaking step towards an inevitable future - whether Intel takes us there or not.
