First Intel-powered smartphone to launch this week

The first commercially-available, Intel-powered smartphone will go on sale this week, the company's chief executive, Paul Otellini, has said.

Otellini revealed the release in an earnings call on Tuesday. According to reports, the device in question is Lava's X900 Android phone, which is destined for the Indian market.

Lava's Xolo X900 Android phone will reportedly be the first to use Intel's chips. Image credit: Lava

The X900 was revealed at Mobile World Congress in February. The device is based on Intel's reference design platform, which is probably one reason why it is the first of the Atom-based handsets to hit the market.

Lava's phone uses the Z2460 Atom processor alongside Intel's XMM 6260 platform, for HSPA+ connectivity.

Other manufacturers will also be bringing out Intel-powered phones later this year, including Lenovo, with its K800, and Motorola.

Almost all mobile phones and tablets use ARM's architecture, which has traditionally been much more power-efficient than Intel's x86 architecture.

However, the two architectures are now competing directly, with Intel improving its designs' power efficiency in a bid to get into phones, and ARM making its designs more powerful.

Also on Tuesday, ARM launched a new processor that can be used in notebooks — traditionally x86's domain, but one that ARM will be able to get into through the release later this year of Windows for ARM.