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Having spent 24 years at Intel, Sean Maloney who is the executive vice president, general manager, Sales and Marketing Group and chief sales and marketing officer, Intel Corporation has been in-step with the company’s product milestones and also the occasional rough and tumble
He has played various roles at Intel such as country manager of Intel UK, and director of marketing for Intel Europe, technical assistant to the chairman and chief executive of Intel, Dr Andrew S Grove, and head of Intel's worldwide sales organization. He was appointed chief sales and marketing officer in June 2006.
Maloney was Bangalore in late January and was the main speaker at MAIT’s Wireless World 2007 where he spoke about the impact of WiMax. Priya Padmanabhan from CyberMedia News caught up with Maloney for an interview that spanned areas such as Intel’s WiMax’s push, new products and affordable PCs. Excerpts from the interview:
It is almost a year since Intel revamped its “Intel Inside” branding and sharpened its focus as a platform player. Are the results of this exercise paying off for you now?
Much more than the brand change, the bigger thing for us has been our new products that flooded the market in the middle of last year such as Core2Duo and WiMax chips. We have a lot of cool new products. In fact, each time, we introduce something new, it is a big leap for us. When we launched the Pentium, we wondered if it could really make a difference to the world. But it did. And so did Centrino and so also Core2Duo. Core2Duo has ramped up faster than we expected.
We see a strong demand for Core2Duo. We expected it to be stronger on the desktop but surprisingly, the demand is more on the notebook side. It is growing more rapidly than desktop.
In the last couple of years, Intel has been making the push for WiMax. What are you doing to build and engage the WiMax ecosystem?
Two-and-a-half billion people in the world are not on the Internet because of the challenge of the last mile. To bridge this global digital divide, we need to connect to the last mile. This is an ambitious program and there is still a lot of work to be done. The question is how to cover the planet with a broadband umbrella. It is immensely difficult but we are advocating the idea and working with partners like equipment manufacturers, cell phone makers and governments on this. I have already spoken with many government heads on this.
Regulators need to know that you need a lot of spectrum for WiMax. A lot of countries are moving towards standardization of spectrum for Wi-Fi and WiMax
You recently announced the 802.11n wireless networking module that has not yet been standardized by the IEEE. Why this hurry to release this even before the standard has been ratified?
This (Kedron) card is based on a draft version of the 802.11n specification, which is yet to be standardized. This product is an important milestone for us. We have been committed to this for a long time. Intel and a few of the other companies are quite mature in this field. There was a demand from users who need the speed and another factor was the arrival of video on PCs. There was a lot of demand for the product since they want to download and play music and high-definition videos wirelessly.
Post the AMD-ATI merger, is Intel renewing its R&D focus on graphics?
The answer is yes. Graphics is important for us. We are the largest manufacturer of graphic chips. We have a visual computing group that works in this area. I would say that Intel is focusing more on it than we did a year ago.
Intel has been working on low cost, small form factor PCs for emerging markets. How much progress has been made there?
Small form factor PCs will take off when the price points come down just like it happened in case of the cell phone market. That’s when you see some price elasticity. Volumes will drive the prices down. Broadband penetration is increasing. Intel is pushing it as far as it can. The emergence of a new class of devices, such as ultra mobile PC, small PCs, low-cost PCs, health devices and entertainment or education specific devices, will drive mobile Internet.
Moore’s law is making chips smaller and cheaper. A lot of Governments are interested in affordable PCs. It is unfair that kids in the lower income group don’t have access to information. We have spoken to around 30-40 Governments on low cost PCs and new types of notebooks. Over the next five years, we will see a huge effort in this area. It would take some time to overcome some of the physical impediments.
Do you think that the mobile and the PC will converge?
There are a lot of innovations happening on both the PC as well as the mobile. It is highly unlikely that the two would completely converge. Any type of decisive convergence is difficult because of the small form factor of the cell phone. However these two devices will co-exist and each has its place. I don’t think the mobile can replace the computer. It is difficult to use the Internet on a mobile.
You mentioned in your keynote speech (at the MAIT Wireless World 2007event) that WiMax and Wi-Fi would merge in future. What do you mean by this?
What I meant was that the networks won’t merge. Wi-fi will continue to be popular as a local-area network technology. Over the next two to three years, the two technologies will merge, with Wi-Fi chips supporting WiMax, and WiMax chips supporting Wi-Fi. You will see Wi-fi and Wi-Max radios on the same chip by 2009.
What are the technologies you are betting on future? What can we expect from Intel in 2007?
Technologies we are betting on in future are server infrastructure, performance density, power consumption, powerful portable video, entertainment and power consumption devices, and gaining power efficiency through 45 nm.
In the second half of 2007, the 45 nm manufacturing process will get underway. This is a magical science. The quad core products will be out this year.
© CyberMedia News
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