INTEL’S RESPONSE

The rise of non-x86 laptops, especially ones powered by Qualcomm, has inevitably lead to Intel shaking off its complacency and moving to counter the threat of this new hardware. While it hasn’t explicitly admitted so, its Project Athena initiative is a response to the rise of non-x86 hardware. If you’ve not heard of it, Project Athena is a laptop design initiative that will see Intel work closely with a number of laptop manufacturers to help shape the future of laptops by offering products that are smarter, faster (thanks to 5G), and more power-efficient—so battery lives are much longer. If always-on, alwaysconnected laptops with long battery lives sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly what Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform offers. While Intel’s focus on those aspects could be coincidental—or simply a response to what customers are now wanting from laptops—we can’t help but think it is also driven by the threat posed to its market share by this new breed of laptop.

Intel has suggested that initial Project Athena laptops could release as early as the second half of 2019. However, if that’s the case, then we wouldn’t expect to see any Project Athena-certified laptops until very late this year.

According to Intel, “the next wave of Project Athena designs” will come in “2020 and beyond,” so expect to see Project Athena laptops from manufacturers, such as Asus and Acer, next year. Whether or not they can compete with Windows on Snapdragon laptops remains to be seen. But if Intel can come up with laptops that feature the best of what Snapdragon laptops offer, without the compromises—due to them still running on Intel hardware—it could have a hit on its hands.