A rumor circulating in the upstream supply chain in Taiwan has Intel reportedly questioning whether it should quit the smartphone market in 2015 if it continues to see weak performance in its handset business in 2014, according to sources from the upstream supply chain, though Intel has not yet commented on the rumor.

The sources pointed out that Intel has internally started evaluating whether to stop spending resources on its handset business recently as the business has not seen any significant improvements in the past few years.

Since the CPU giant's cooperation with Lenovo, one of the major shipment contributors for Intel's smartphone products in 2013, has already ended, Intel's handset business may need to find new partners to be able to maintain its shipments for 2014.

Intel has recently cooperated with Asustek Computer to release the ZenFone series smartphones with the 4-inch model priced at US$99, the 5-inch model US$149 and the 6-inch model US$199. The smartphones will be released in March, targeting mainly the China and Southeast Asia markets.

Asustek is expected to release at least three more Intel-based smartphones in the second half.

In February, Intel will announce its next-generation Merrifield-based 22nm smartphone processor, the dual-core Atom SoC (2.13GHz) at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014. The platform will feature the XMM 7160 LTE solution and NXP's PN547 NFC solution, and is set to start shipping at the end of March.