UPDATED 14:51 EDT / APRIL 17 2017

EMERGING TECH

Farewell to the Intel Developer Forum, and the primacy of the PC

In a final admission that the personal computer is no longer the center of its universe, Intel Corp. today announced the company will be discontinuing its Intel Developer Forum trade show, including the IDF17 planned for this summer.

The announcement appeared on the IDF17 website this morning, replacing previous content with a thank-you to the community and links to community resources. “Intel has evolved its event portfolio and decided to retire the IDF program moving forward,” the announcement states. “Thank you for nearly 20 great years with the Intel Developer Forum!”

In recent years, Intel has held two annual developer forum events, one in San Francisco and one in China. The event in China had already been canceled and now the San Francisco event, and all events going forward, will also be no more.

The Intel Developer Forum started in 1997, with China being added to the schedule in 2007. Each year, IDF has been used to showcase Intel’s products and designs, while giving developers and engineers a chance to preview and get hands-on knowledge of upcoming and current research.

In 2015, Intel brought developer kits for products such as Razer’s OSVR headset, which uses Intel’s RealSense 3D camera; sensor-equipped BMX bikes; wireless gigabit charging technology; and even bionic arms. In 2016, Intel showcased Project Alloy, a wireless all-in-one virtual reality headset, amid other developments. In previous years, IDF was also the announcement platform for Intel’s big chip designs such as Skylake and Kaby Lake.

But the upshot is that the traditionally computer- and processor-focused conference no longer serves to emphasize the new technologies and industries Intel is now focused on. Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said that while the move may come as a surprise to industry veterans and while it “may signal an issue,” he believes that there is no reason to be concerned about Intel.

“Intel has diversified their business where it may make more sense for them to hit industry specific shows,” Moorhead told SiliconANGLE, “or hold their own shows covering automobile technology, IIoT, AI and of course, PCs and servers.”

With Intel’s change in strategy and the ever-increasing developer interest across a tremendous variety of expanding services — from virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Internet of Things, automotive, storage and so forth — focusing more on individual industries would give developers more breathing room.

The loss of IDF as an annual event, however, certainly removes a major platform that Intel used in the past to announce products and focus attention from a central space. At the same time, it opens up the opportunity for more events that will provide deeper dives into Intel’s products, partners and services without needing to split up time among totally different industries.

Photo: Intel

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