Intel has confirmed that the company’s first Android tablets will be arriving in time for spring, packing quad-core 64-bit Bay Trail processors.

Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich, told an investor earnings call on Thursday that Intel powered Android tablets would start showing up in Q2 2014, allaying fears following the lack of Intel/Android products at CES. Previously Intel has limited itself to Windows tablets, Bay Trail versions of which should be arriving sometime this quarter. The move into Android is part of Intel’s plan to diversity into a platform with a larger market share, but the sudden change in direction has caused a slight delay in Bay Trail’s Android release.

Most of the Bay Trail Android tablets really start showing up more in Q2…remember we made a shift, the original program for Bay Trail was all Windows,

This schedule could put Intel on track to be the first chip manufacturer to release a 64-bit Android device, however other ARM based processor developers, such as Samsung and Qualcomm, are also working on their own 64-bit chips and might beat them to the punch.

Despite the marketing buzz, the real merits of 64-bit mobile processing have yet to be proven. We’re not exactly processing large chunks of data on mobile CPUs, tablets aren’t pressing against the 4GB RAM limit yet, and Android doesn’t even have official 64-bit support yet either. Although Intel has just finished work on a 64-bit Android Kernel which could help kickstart further software support.

It’ll also be interesting to see how an Intel chip performs with Android. Previous estimations put the Bay Trail CPU somewhere around the Tegra 4. Keep your eyes peel for further details regarding Intel Android tablets over the next couple of months.