Intel is getting out of the smartphone market with cancellation of SoFIA and Broxton chips

Intel has confirmed that it has canceled plans to release its SoFIA and Broxton chips that were being made primarily for smartphones. This means that Intel currently has no chips that will be used in future smartphones.

Intel's shift away from the smartphone market was first announced by analyst Patrick Moorhead, via Forbes, and later confirmed by Intel itself in a statement from a spokesperson to AnandTech:

I can confirm that the changes included canceling the Broxton platform as well as SoFIA 3GX, SoFIA LTE and SoFIA LTE2 commercial platforms to enable us to move resources to products that deliver higher returns and advance our strategy. These changes are effective immediately.

The move follows Intel's announcement last week it was laying off 12,000 of its employees, or about 11% of its workforce, by mid-2017. While the company did have chips inside a few Android-based smartphones in the past several years, including the ASUS ZenFone 2, Intel's share of the phone market was just a fraction of the amount claimed by ARM-based processors made by Qualcomm and others.

John Callaham