Intel Working on Porting Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to Atom Processors

As much of today’s mobile smartphones and tablets operate on ARM chipset architecture, rival Intel with its x86 architecture is trying to further its push into the mobile space through Android by working on porting Google’s latest Jelly Bean operating system for use on its low-power Atom CPU. Intel did not provide a timeline for when this work will be completed.

“Intel continues to work closely with Google to enable future versions of Android, including Jelly Bean, on our family of low power Atom processors,” said Suzy Greenberg, a company spokeswoman, in an e-mail to PC World.

Intel’s Atom chipsets are already present on a number of Android smartphones today, including the Lava smartphone, a device from wireless carrier Orange, and one from Lenovo for the Chinese market. Those smartphones are currently on Atom processors and running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, though Intel has stated that it is working on a software update to bring those devices to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Like work on bringing Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to Atom, Intel did not provide a timeline for when the Ice Cream Sandwich update will roll out to existing handsets.

Additionally, Motorola is expected to deploy smartphones and tablets on Intel architecture in the future.

Intel is also working on rolling out an updated Atom architecture design in the future called Clover Trail, but that hardware platform won’t be used for Android smartphones and tablets. Instead, Intel will be working with Microsoft to bring Clover Trail to Windows 8. The Clover Trail platform will compete against ARM architecture as well as ARM will be used on Windows RT, a scaled down version of Windows 8.