Intel Corp., the world"s biggest maker of microchips, is freshening up its money-losing communications business with a new set of chips for cell phones, days ahead of its quarterly earnings report.
The Santa Clara, California-based company plans on Monday to introduce chips that will allow video conferencing on mobile phones and DVD-quality video playback on handheld devices. The new chips aim to inject some life into Intel"s communications business, which lost $858 million last year.
Intel combined its communications and data networking businesses last year after failing to gain traction in the fiercely competitive mobile phone chip business. Texas Instruments Inc. is the largest supplier of cell phone chips.
Intel executives have blamed the unit"s losses partly on the slower-than-expected roll-out of speedy wireless data connections, as well as the video and messaging services that take advantage of that speed.
"Advances in wireless broadband demand a new kind of wireless device," said Sean Maloney, the Intel executive vice president who last year took command of the company"s newly combined communications group, in a statement.