The chipset is also a gigantic package and remains extremely power hungry in comparison to pretty much any of the ARM family. This requires a very large phone usually, and a huge battery. It also has extremely weak on chip image and video processing, amongst a host of other issues. There's also the fact that even with the huge subsidies and 'marketing' money, it remains hugely uncompetitive in price on mobile. I'd be shocked if there aren't issues with the modem or drivers / firmware for it too, as it'll be their first one.

If this is the 'reference platform' Saarnio mentioned with regard to supposed partnerships, it'll never see widespread adoption among any quality Chinese OEMs and would go down like a lead balloon. It'd also eliminate any synergy / time saving with the libhybris work that has gone into and continues to go into Mediatek (and other ARM) chipsets for Ubuntu Phone.

Also, with regard to their security first mantra ... is anyone ever going to believe that, having a device with an integrated Intel mobile modem?

Actually, UEFI is a major problem for an open device. It was designed from the ground up to shut out third party software / OSes / ROMs. Indeed, if you can recall, in the run up to its launch on desktop, there was a great deal of worry that it would be impossible to install non MS operating systems on systems shipped with it preinstalled. This was the intention, but they backed down due to the storm that erupted. For a mobile platform that wants to be open or have an unlocked bootloader, they're going to need to disable a lot of the UEFI features (and certainly much of the security), from what I understand. It was originally meant to only work with OSes that provided a secure, approved key. This is why Jolla are "making no promises" on this front for the tablet.