Intel Announces Low-powered Atom Z2420 SoC for Emerging Markets

One of the most active companies at CES in the announcements department is Intel, and it wasted no time in getting things kicked-off today. It's obvious that the company would love a much larger piece of the mobile pie, but to date, it's had a difficult time penetrating the North American market. However, it's been doing fairly well in other places - especially in emerging markets. So, it's of no surprise that the company is retaining a good focus there, and is doing so with its just-announced Atom Z2420 mobile processor, codenamed "Lexington".

The SoC - which is so new, it's not even listed on Intel's own site yet - is clocked at 1.2GHz, supports 1080p and HSPA+ wireless speeds. Thanks to it being pretty much a requirement today, the latest SoC supports dual cameras, and is in fact optimized for them. Further, the chip supports dual-SIM standby technology which allows two SIM cards to be installed in a phone at once, with the device being able to switch between them - perfect for travelers.

Once the chip is shipped to market, it will be found in Latin America, India and Africa in smartphones from Acer, Lava and Safaricom. While the chip isn't limited to running Android, that's undoubtedly going to be the focus of vendors.

With Intel's target on mobile, we can only hope that the company will be able to penetrate the market to a much greater degree in 2013. We often hear from the company that its parts are superior to the competition, but in order for consumers to realize that, they need to actually be able to buy the devices.