That lasted a few months, at least.

Nokia and Intel had decided in 2010 that they needed an answer to Apple’s iPhone juggernaut which was taking high-end smartphone sales away from Helsinki and making it completely obvious that the king of chips had no chips in the mobile processor poker game. Meego was the answer, and Meego would be the operating system that would lead the then-still-powerful Nokia back to the forefront of the mobile market, and would make Intel relevant in small, low-powered, and battery-life-efficient phone CPUs.

Unfortunately, one loser plus another loser often just equals two losers. And, unfortunately for Nokia and Intel, Google and Samsung took their lunch and ate it, too, as Android began to reign uber alles. So Nokia turned to Microsoft for salvation — and a very painful process it has been — and Meego lost its way.

But not entirely.

Jolla, a new and independent smartphone vendor which almost no-one but mobile wonks has ever heard of, took the core of Meego and built Sailfish, a new mobile operating system that is built on an open-source project named Mer that is the new incarnation of Meego, and is just now teasing the coming-soon release of its very first device, the oddly named and oddly designed but also oddly attractive “The Other Half.”

Surprise, surprise, Jolla is based in Helsinki, Finland, where there just happens to be a surplus of top-notch mobile talent available lately (shocking, isn’t it). And surprise, surprise, all of the top Jolla leaders are ex-Nokia employees. Almost two years ago, Jolla announced its intentions of bringing a new smartphone to market. The biggest surprise is that they seem to be succeeding.

We are Jolla. We are Unlike

Jolla appears to be a two-part device, consisting of a 4.5-inch screen, a buttonless main phone handset, and various colorful plastic cases, or “other halves.”

Snap one on, and your phone OS changes.

Source: Jolla

The Sailfish OS almost reminds you of Windows Phone tiles.

Changes color, changes battery life, perhaps, changes content such as apps and media, and changes in other ways yet to be invented, based on the creativity of Jolla and partners.

Actual devices have yet to be released, and the details are fewer than might be desired, but the key point is that the Jolla is Android app compatible. Which, frankly, is probably essential for any new smartphone platform entering the market today. The smartphone market is an ecosystem battle, not a device battle primarily, and any new entrants with any real aspirations for success have to plug into what is already available and — largely — a global standard.

Interestingly, the main Sailfish operating system screen appears to draw from Windows Phone design elements, with titles on the home screen that aggregate information that you might be interested in.

According to Engadget, the phone will have a dual-core processor (type unknown), LTE, an 8MP rear camera and a front-facing camera, and have 16GB onboard storage plus micro-SD expansion.

At the very least, it’s an interesting take on mobile that enables users to participate in some — if not all — of the benefits of the world’s leading smartphone operating system, while still having some unique and differentiating factors. Jolla says it will offer the world’s best multitasking experience, and will be so intuitive that you can operate your favorite features “without even looking at the device.”

Main navigation on the phone is buttonless, with the four main icons appearing to be Phone, Messages, Browser, and Apps. The Sailfish operating system will also support gesture control, the company said.

I’m assuming that full Google integration and access to Google services such as music would not be included, and syncing contacts and other core data would not be as simple as on a straight Android phone.

However, Jolla seems to be competing on differentiation. And while the jury will be out on how successfully they’ve achieved it until we have actual devices in our hands, at first glance, they’ve succeeded.

Image credits: Jolla

Notable this year is Apple, with its whopping $156 billion in 2012 sales, jumping into the top 10 for the first time in its 37-year history. And Google, with its big $50 billion year, bulled its way up almost 20 spots to hit No. 55. Perhaps most impressive, however, is Facebook, which with the youngest CEO in the Fortune 500 made the list for the very first time at 487.

Ranking companies by income is a fairly arbitrary measure, since it reveals little about how much companies actually earn, but it does show scope and scale. A grain of salt is definitely indicated, however, as Google’s profits, for instance, are many multiples of Dell’s despite that Dell is ranked No. 51 and Google is No. 55.

Here are the 41 technology companies that Fortune included on its list.

• 6: Apple
• 15: HP
• 20: IBM
• 35: Microsoft
• 49: Amazon
• 51: Dell
• 54: Intel
• 55: Google
• 60: Cisco Systems
• 80: Oracle
• 131: Xerox
• 133: EMC
• 176: Computer Sciences
• 163: Jabil Circuit
• 194: Qualcomm
• 196: eBay
• 218: Texas Instruments
• 222: Western Digital
• 240: SAIC
• 267: CDW
• 270: Liberty Interactive
• 302: Applied Materials
• 304: Motorola Solutions
• 318: Micron Technology
• 326: Corning
• 327: Broadcom
• 352: Congnizant Technology Solutions
• 379: Symantec
• 408: NetApp
• 420: Sanmina
• 429: Harris
• 436: Booz Allen Hamilton Holding
• 441: NCR
• 473: Priceline.com
• 464: AMD
• 477: Avaya
• 482: Facebook
• 487: SanDisk
• 489: Pitney Bowes
• 494: Yahoo
• 499: CA Technologies

A couple of caveats:

I have not included telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, although a good argument can be made that they are now, primarily, technology companies, simply because Fortune did not classify them in any recognizable technology category. And I have included retailers like CDW and companies like Pitney Bowes, which Fortune classifies in categories like Computers, Office Equipment, and Information Technology Services.

One interesting note: While Facebook has the Fortune 500′s youngest CEO, Dole Food’s David Murdock, at 90 years old, is the Fortune 500′s oldest CEO.

photo credit: mikesolita via photopin cc

AMD has hired an Apple veteran to lead its chip software developer and a Qualcomm engineer to lead its system-on-chip efforts, according to Reuters. Apple’s Wayne Meretsky and Qualcomm’s Charles Matar will join another ex-Apple employee, Jim Keller, who had previously designed processors for iPhone and iPad.

A quick glance at AMD’s current lineup of chips reveals the likely reason: This company is not prepared for a future in which you can sell more chips and, perhaps, make more money in smartphones, tablets, and other devices versus desktop and laptop PCs. Amid the company’s processors for PCs, graphics cards, memory, and embedded solutions is only one solution for mobile: AMD’s Z-Series, announced late last year.

That’s a massive problem, as Intel’s lackluster earnings a few days ago showed. PC sales are down, and PC processor sales are down as well. This is not the first time we’ve heard this song.

So AMD needs to get up to speed, and quickly, expanding its Z-series and making it a processor family that tablet manufacturers want to use.

It’s worth noting that AMD recently announced that it would offer ARM-based processors in its server chips, a move that VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi compared to “a major league baseball team switching to football.” They’re not expected until 2014, and server chips are generally not identical to mobile chips, but it does mean the veteran PC chipmaker could be inching closer to ARM mobile chips as well, such as those used by Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and iPod, along with almost every other smartphone and tablet on the market.

The big question: Is this too little, too late for perpetually sad-sack AMD?

photo credit: LoKan Sardari via photopin cc

Apple’s Tim Cook will shortly be hearing a question something like that, as Justice Lucy Koh has ordered him to appear in court to give a deposition regarding alleged antitrust violations. Apple is one of a list of companies, including Intuit, Adobe, Google, and Pixar, that are being accused of agreeing not to recruit each other’s employees.

The case has been ongoing, believe it or not, since late 2010, when the Department of Justice required the tech companies to nix those agreements and reached a settlement with them.

According to the DOJ, the anti-poaching agreements reached back as far as 2005 for Apple and Adobe, 2006 for Apple and Google, and 2007 for Apple and Pixar. The settlement at the time prohibited the companies from “entering, maintaining or enforcing any agreement that in any way prevents any person from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees.”

The current lawsuit is a follow-on action brought by employees who claim that the companies’ illegal agreements harmed their employment prospects. And while Cook was not Apple’s CEO at the time,  Bloomberg reports that Justice Koh told Apple lawyers that since Steve Jobs was copied on emails about the practice, she found it hard to believe that Cook would not have been consulted as well.

There’s currently no timetable for Cook’s deposition, but Google’s Eric Schmidt will be deposed on February 20, and Intel’s Paul Otellini will be grilled in the next few weeks.

If Apple and the other tech companies lose the lawsuit, which is being brought employees as varied as engineers and chefs, they would be liable for additional salary and compensation for the affected staff.

Justice Koh is the same judge who is presiding over many of the Apple-Samsung legal battles. You’d think she’d be getting a little tired of seeing the Cupertino company in her courtroom.

photo credit: igrec via photopin cc

We’ve seen the clash of titans in mobile as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have released new phones, tablets, and mobile operating systems. We’ve seen a single network connect over a billion people worldwide. We’ve seen the once-great mobile company of the far European north forced to hawk its headquarters to raise cash. And we’ve seen social media move from cutting-edge to mainstream as the Obama campaign celebrated four more years.

In every year, we see winners and losers: companies, devices, or operating systems. Here’s our look at some of the biggest successes and failures of 2012.

The winners

	Android What more can you say about Android? With 75 percent market share in the third quarter of 2012, the free mobile operating system from Google looks poised to take over the world.
	Samsung  Not many companies sell 55 million smartphones in a quarter. Samsung did, and it will probably do it again.
	Galaxy S III Samsung is hot in large part due to its top smartphone, the Galaxy S III. With over 18 million units shipped in the third quarter, and 30 million shipped in five months, it’s easy to see why.
	iPhone 5 Sure, it was Time’s gadget of the year. But more importantly, iPhone 5 catapulted Apple back into the smartphone leadership position, at least in the U.S.
	iPad Mini We called it immediately: light, portable, awesome, and expensive. And it even looked better up close and person in our review. But we had no clue it would become one of Apple’s best-selling iPads. And now that it’s probably going Retina in April/May, it’s just getting better.
	YouTube YouTube continues to be the online leader, by far, in online video with 800 million visitors and billion-view channels created by individuals and brands. Despite getting the boot from iOS6, YouTube just continues to grow, with 25 times the video streams of its nearest competitor.
	Twitter 2012 is the year that Twitter went mainstream, reaching 500 million users mid-summer and just recently announcing 200 million monthly active users. And despite major new API restrictions that soured its relationship with developers, a very public spat with Instagram, and an evolving shift from social utility to media company, the company continues to grow and solidify its space in fast-breaking news.
	Instagram With a sale initially priced at almost $1.3 billion and an exploding user count, not even a tone-deaf terms-of-service change that spurred a class action lawsuit and a possible exodus of some users can keep Instagram off our winner list.
	Google Android is hot — 75 percent market-share hot. Search is still a massive strength for the iconic company that runs an ad 30 billion times each and every day. And so Google makes over $100 million a day – and hits our list of hot companies in 2012.
	ARM With the vast majority of the chips in smartphones running ARM processors, ARM has people wondering whether the mobile juggernaut will challenge Intel for CPU dominance. That’s still a stretch, but not nearly what it was just a few years ago.
	Reddit With 3.8 billion page views and 46 million unique visitors in October — double the previous year’s numbers — Reddit is continuing its torrid growth. And it doesn’t hurt when the POTUS himself chooses your site to do an informal meet-the-people session — which required 60 dedicated servers.

Next page: The losers

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It’s not nearly often enough that we hear about startup ideas that address global hunger, fuel inefficiency, or support the deaf and blind.

This week, Intel threw an event to do just that — to uncover these ideas from research labs, and provide them with funds for launch in the global market. This is the eighth time that the computing device maker has hosted the global business plan competition. This year, it was held at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and the finalists received $100,000.

The winner?

Greenway Grameen Infra (GGI), a team from India that produces efficient, biomass-based cooking solutions to replace indoor open fires and traditional mud stoves.

The flagship product is the Greenway Smart Stove, which incorporates a unique air-flow generator to provide clean and efficient combustion, saving up to 65 percent of fuel and resulting in a 70 percent reduction in smoke. The team piloted the stove in India; sales topped 12,000 units through rural retail outlets. The team received $50,000 from Intel’s Foundation.

“The Intel Global Challenge inspires and rewards great entrepreneurs who bring the best science and technology innovations from universities around the world to market for the benefit of us all,” said Andre Marquis, executive director, Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at UC Berkeley. Marquis said it has bolstered the school’s efforts to build a network of entrepreneurs around the world.

The runners up include Dreambender, an Indonesia-based startup that has developed an innovative sign language system; it uses Microsoft’s Kinect as a motion sensor, enabling users to practice gestures based on video examples until they have mastered them. ISkyTracker, a Russian technology, enables people to connect to the Internet anywhere. Its system provides automatic searches for telecommunication satellites.

Read more about the recent Tech Laureate awards (another recent competition to reward “tech for good” ideas) here.

Top image courtesy of Alexander Kirch, Shutterstock

The reason?

ASML and Cymer have already been working together on Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) technology to help chip-makers like Intel, Samsung, and Taiwan semi make smaller, faster computer chips. The goal of the acquisition, the company said, is to speed up development.

Computer chips are currently made with a lithographic process using ultraviolet light at 193 to 248 nanometers: literally, the circuits are printed with light. Cymer and ASML are working on shrinking the ultraviolet laser beam down to just 13.5 nanometers, which will allow companies like Intel to squeeze more transistors on chips, making them faster.

By contrast, the hair on your head is gargantuan, at 40,000 to 60,000 nanometers wide, and the head of a pin is a galaxy-spanning million nanometers across.

“EUV is vital to support the semiconductor industry’s transition to the next manufacturing technology, which is needed to create microchips with more functions at a lower cost and that are more energy-efficient, consistent with Moore’s Law,” ASML said in a statement.

With the merger, ASML believes it will be able to install its first EUV-enabled NXE:3300B systems in 2013 for testing and R&D at customer sites, and move the machine into full production in 2014.

In June, ASML sold a 23 percent stake of itself to its three biggest customers, according to Reuters, to fund EUV research and development. This purchase looks to be the beneficiary.

photo credits: Krassy Can Do It via photopin, ccMalinkrop via photopin cc

According to Santamaria’s personal announcement email, the move was motivated by a desire to get back into the startup life:

I am writing this email to inform you that after 14 years at Intel, I am leaving to join a Redmond based startup – WebTuner Corp.

What some of you might know is that I came to Intel as part of an acquisition in 1999. At that time I had been part of a series of startups and what I have found these past 10 months running AppUp (which is really a startup inside of Intel) is that I miss it. So, when the opportunity came to join a stealthy digital media company, an area I have been working on for Intel for the past 5 years, I jumped.

Source: LinkedIn

Steven Santamaria

When Intel originally created the AppUp division, it was focused on the emerging netbook category, and Intel viewed it as a competitive hedge against Apple’s and other companies’ app stores that could eventually expand to smartphones, smart TVs, and PCs.

Today, of course, netbooks are yesterday’s news, tablets have won, Apple has brought the app store concept to the desktop, and Microsoft has launched the Windows Store (though not every developer is happy about it).

And AppUp, despite being in the market for several years, still has a very limited number of apps, with 36 in the Sports category, 41 apps in News, and 63 in Music. Intel does have almost 1,400 apps in Games, but the comparable categories on iOS and Android have tens of thousands.

Having put two apps into Intel AppUp, I also know from personal experience that Intel was paying developers to put apps on the store … just as other app store proprietors such as Microsoft and Research in Motion have been forced to do when faced with some degree of developer apathy.

And after hitting about 400,000 unique visitors/month in late 2011, AppUp.com is down to about 100,000.

Source: Compete.com

AppUp.com traffic

I’ve asked Santamaria — who is saying all the right things — for additional comment, but haven’t heard back from him yet. Intel PR released a simple statement basically hitting the high points in Santamaria’s email:

Steve left Intel to return to his passion, a start-up company. We are grateful for his 14 years at Intel and wish him well.

However, it doesn’t reflect well on a company or a division when a leader leaves after such a short time. And, given the moves of the market in the past couple of years, I’m wondering if there’s a future for AppUp.

That question, I think, would have a very easy answer if AppUp was just a startup on its own, without the financial and market power of an Intel behind it.

photo credit: schnaars via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Dell is near a five-year low. Asus, the company that brought us the netbook, is worth half what it was in 2009. Acer is worth a quarter what it was worth at its peak in 2005, and Toshiba has shed huge amounts of value in the past years.

Which means that now is a horrible time for Intel to delay Windows 8 tablets with the latest processors.

But that’s exactly what’s happening, according to Bloomberg, which said late last night that the reason Microsoft hasn’t approved any Windows 8 tablets using the new Clover Trail chip is that Intel is late on power management software.

Oops.

It’s already difficult for the traditional PC sales leaders to compete with Apple, the most valuable company in the world, which has fewer product lines, tighter inventory controls, and simpler manufacturing processes than most of the PC world. The tablet revolution caught most of the traditional PC industry by surprise, and companies like Dell, Asus, Acer, and Toshiba are still scrambling to respond.

Windows 8 is supposed to provided a good portion of that response, melding the simplified touch interface of a tablet with the full power of desktop applications, but as Apple fans can attest, software and hardware need to mesh tightly for an optimal product. And if the hardware’s not ready, problems are inevitable.

The latest problem comes less than a week after Intel chief executive Paul Otellini reportedly told Taiwanese employees that Windows 8 was being released before it’s ready. Intel released a sort-of denial later that day. It suggests that both Microsoft and Intel are getting a little testy as the planned ship date for Windows 8, October 26, draws near.

Clover Trail is the next version of Intel’s Atom chip, long known for its cheap, if somewhat underpowered, performance in netbooks and laptops. But Intel has now further optimized it for tablet use and improved battery life — up to 10 hours.

VentureBeat reached out to Intel for comment, and a company representative told us that Intel expects Clover Trail to ready in time for the Windows 8 launch.

photo credit: Photo Extremist via photopin cc

“The explosion of cloud apps is creating new problems in the data center,” Mark Collier, a Rackspace vice president, said in a statement. “ARM-powered OpenStack clouds [combine] a radically more efficient chip architecture with the flexible OpenStack cloud operating system designed to manage them at scale.”

ARM processors are known for their miserly power consumption and low cost, which is why ARM chips power 73 percent of all mobile devices. Those same qualities are important in a cloud environment, where speed and power need to be balanced with energy costs and heat.

Servers, and therefore clouds, have traditionally been built with x86 chips from Intel, an ARM competitor. No one has yet built a commercial cloud with the ARM processors, partly because software needs to be tweaked to run on the non-X86 chip architecture, and partly because most ARM processors are 32-bit, while enterprise software is often 64-bit.

But in recent years, as ARM processors added power to their long-known and valued efficiency, they’ve become a viable option for servers.

A key member of the partnership is Calxeda, an Austin-based hardware startup that launched an ARM-based server-on-a-chip processor late last year. Using exactly that technology, HP, another one of the partners in today’s announcement, managed to squeeze 288 quad-core ARM processors into a 4U server, packing an incredible 1,152 processor cores into a single server.

That kind of compact power can drive significant cloud applications.

According to Calxeda VP Karl Freund, “There is massive demand from end-users, ISVs, and members of the open source community to access this new technology.”

OpenStack is an open-source cloud architecture, supported by 180 companies, that is intended to drive open standards in clouds, reducing customer lock-in to any one solution (such as Amazon Web Services). Adding ARM capabilities could make it a very attractive low-power option for those partners, and others.

Dell, Marvell, and Red Hat have also each announced similar ARM-based server products, although it’s not clear if there are currently clouds operational with those companies’ solutions.

Image credit: RawCaptured/ShutterStock

Despite Nokia’s defection to Windows 7 and Intel’s difficulties finding new partners for the open-source project, the beauty of open source is that the code always lives on … in this case, with a small group of former Nokia employees and open-source diehards, Jolla Group, who have now amazingly, incredibly, unbelievably struck a distribution deal with a Chinese retail chain: D.Phone Group.

The news was first announced in a tweet — Jolla Group‘s site is not yet live:

Great news: Jolla has just signed its first sales deal. What a start for a new exciting week – follow the news today! #meego #jolla—
Jolla (@JollaMobile) July 16, 2012

According to Androidistica, the chairman on Jolla, Dr. Antti Saarnio, said in a statement that “this agreement with D.Phone is a major step in Jolla’s journey towards becoming a significant player in the global smartphone market.”

As much as I am impressed that this tiny group of developers is taking the Meego code-base and actually releasing a product with it, that statement is ridiculous.

A sales and distribution agreement with an unknown Chinese retailer is not a major step. The mobile platform wars are full of powerful and wealthy competitors. And it’s all about developers now … which means that a tiny, almost unknown platform with little distribution has a snowball’s chance in hell of survival.

Alas, it is time again to “bring out yer dead:”

In the constant cycle of tablet and smartphone news, the seemingly minor upgrade to Apple’s MacBook Air barely made headlines. That’s not really surprising, especially after the announcement of the Retina ready MacBook Pro. A next generation Intel CPU and graphics processor, USB 3.0 ports, and more flash storage don’t sound all that impressive.

In reality, this iterative update makes the MacBook Air the perfect laptop.

Same on the outside, shiny on the inside

Generally considered the premier Ultrabook (though it’s not officially labeled one), the MacBook Air is an excellent laptop that offers a near-perfect balance of size and power. It remains the thinnest and lightest 13” and 11” Ultrabook on the market.

I liked last year’s 13” model so much that I bought one, and still find the design and power superb for most personal and work applications. But what’s remarkable about the 2012 model — and this has nothing to do with Apple — is the performance boost gained solely from Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge chipset.

Last year’s MacBook Air ran on the then-new Sandy Bridge i5 processor, and my model was the top-of-the-line i7 with 4GB of RAM, priced at $1,800. The latest unit drops the price by $100 and offers the updated i5 or i7 at faster clock speeds while also doubling the RAM to 8GB. For less money, this year’s stock MacBook Air outperforms last year’s high-end model by 150% for nearly every application. (The 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,199 for a 1.8Ghz i5 processor and 4GB of RAM.)

Aside from the internal components, little has actually changed with the MBA. It uses the same heat dissipation techniques, the same basic architecture, the same display, and the same keyboard. There are a few differences, like improved viewing angles and increased brightness on the glossy 1440 by 900 display, as well as better color accuracy, something the 2011 model has serious trouble with. The keys are also slightly elevated for a deeper feeling keyboard, which is more comfortable to type with. Put the two models together however and anyone would have trouble knowing which was newer.

Improved enough to all but eliminate the problems

Stress the laptops, however, and there’s a world of difference. Pull up 20-30 YouTube clips; try streaming several bandwidth- and processor-intensive videos; run intensive applications like Adobe Photoshop with dozens of photos; boot capable games like Half-Life 2 or Flash-hungry titles like The Binding of Isaac…and the 2011 model’s fan will scream bloody Mary, the left side of the keyboard will heat up to around 100°F, and you’ll need headphones and a hard surface to keep going. The fan gets extremely loud and the keyboard gets way too hot. On the 2012 MBA the same thing can happen, but it rarely does.

That is to say, the overheating and loud fan hasn’t been fixed. This newer model is susceptible to both. With enough stress the left side of the unibody shell will overheat and become uncomfortable to type on, especially if you’re out in the sun. The fan can still stir up a hailstorm of noise. But thanks to the improved performance of Ivy Bridge, it’s nearly impossible to run enough everyday applications to stress the Air to that point. Except for intensive games like Half-Life 2, the 2012 MBA remained calm, cool, and pleasant to use. No matter how many browser tabs, office applications, or how much media you have running, the MacBook Air performs flawlessly.

Using the new Ivy Bridge chipset has another exceptional benefit from the higher performance: battery life is greatly improved. On the 2011 MBA battery life ranged from 4-7 hours, and usually closer to the lower side of that if running streaming video or stressful applications. That is boosted to 5.5-8 hours on the newer MBA, which is a remarkable upgrade for an identical 50-watt-hour battery. And because heat is rarely a problem, I averaged closer to seven hours of battery life per charge. (Protip: Use an extension like FlashBlock to disable Flash on any MacBook Air model for a big bump in battery life.)

The perfect ultrabook

In so many ways, the latest MacBook Air is a dream come true for anyone interested in upgrading to a thin, light, and still powerful laptop. Better performance, an improved display and keyboard, greatly improved battery life and thermals because of the performance boost…all for $100 less than last year’s model. Throw in USB 3.0 and the laptop is officially future-proof.

Products like the MacBook Air 13” (2012) make iterative updates like internal components so much more pertinent than evolutionary upgrades. The only downside? People who purchased last year’s model will want to upgrade because the performance boost makes all the difference in the world. If you barely stress the 2011 model now, then hold fast. But if you find that your MacBook Air screams like a banshee and has the average lifespan of a fruit fly, upgrading will be costly, but worthwhile.

Photos: James Pikover/VentureBeat

A day after reporting record annual results, Intel announced today some management changes that clarify who might eventually succeed current chief executive Paul Otellini (pictured).

Two executives appear to be on the path toward more important roles in the future. Brian Krzanich, senior vice president in charge of worldwide manufacturing, has been named chief operating officer, reporting to Otellini. Krzanich will oversee manufacturing, information technology, and human resources. It seems like both would be in the running to eventually replace Otellini as head of the world’s biggest chip maker.

Dadi Perlmutter, head of the Intel Architecture Group, has also been named the chief product officer.

As previously announced, vice chairman Andy Bryant will become executive chairman starting with the annual meeting in May. Chief financial officer, who previously reported to Bryant (the former CFO), will now report to Otellini. Bill Holt, senior vice president and head of technology development, will also now report to Otellini rather than Bryant.

Kirk Skaugen, vice president and head of Intel’s data center business, will be chief of the PC Client Group. He takes over from Mooly Eden, who is moving back to Israel at his own request. Eden is going to be president and general manager of Intel Israel, where the company designs many of its microprocessors.

Diane Bryant, vice president and CIO, will take over the data center business from Skaugen. Kim Stevenson, vice president of IT global operations and services, will succeed Bryant as CIO. She will report to Krzanich.

They also took a lot of photographs. Here are some of our favorite images and finds from the CES 2012 floor, including an Atari controller for the iPad, exciting in-car computers, and the hottest new laptops and mobile phones. For even more images, check out the VentureBeat Flickr photostream.

You can find in-depth articles about these products and events in our collection of CES 2012 coverage, including hands-ons and videos.

Photos by Dean Takahashi, Devindra Hardawar, Dylan Tweney, and Sean Ludwig.