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The headlines almost write themselves for Intel’s quarterly results. Time and again, they are variations on the same theme – stunning performance, but it’s not coming from mobile. Intel continues to defy market expectations and benefit from a PC sector that just keeps growing, and it is also tapping into the slow but steady shift away from PCs to a host of mobile gadgets connected to the cloud. But the cloud is driving sales for Intel at the server end, the star performer of this quarter – while at the device end, it remains static. The vision remains grand – new partnerships to revive the MeeGo operating system after Nokia’s defection; on-chip security with the purchase of McAfee; the creation of a full blown mobile platform around Atom, courtesy of Infineon Wireless and other smaller acquisitions. Those two key takeoevers closed in the quarter, but still the vision remains jam tomorrow. On the results call, CEO Paul Otellini said he would be “very disappointed” if Atom-based smartphones and tablets were not on the market “12 months from now”. The problem is, most investors are very disappointed they are not on the market right now.

For the past two years, Intel has been turning out new Atom announcements, promising to match ARM-based designs for low power while retaining its own strengths in performance. But the goalposts keep shifting. The upcoming generation, Oak Trail, was supposed to be the processor that would be really suited to mobile devices, yet already there is talk that actually, its successor Cedar Trail will fulfil that role, which means another wait. Intel is promising to move Atom more rapidly than Moore’s Law from now on, yet it still has the appearance of running to stand still while Samsung, Qualcomm and the others talk about their own next milestones in low power and PC-class performance.

Meanwhile, Atom remains firmly stuck in the netbook category, which is currently suffering at the hands of tablets and superphones - though it should see its own revival, when it is reborn as the more powerful and agile ‘cloudbook’ later this year. That category will be well suited to Oak Trail/Cedar Trail and also Intel’s MeeGo. If it gains sufficient momentum, it could even give Intel the chance to create a new Wintel-style integration of silicon and OS, and a counterweight to ARM/Google. But that is yet another grand vision. The cloudbook boom is one for the future (and could fizzle) and while Intel waits for the big break to take on ARM, it needs progress in the here-and-now mobile sectors. Which means getting Atom into some real tablets and phones, and working harder on Android. However Intel may see MeeGo (and Google’s own Chrome OS) clipping Android’s wings in the future, for now the OS is the flavor du jour. The chip giant has optimized Oak Trail for the Honeycomb tablet release, but it needs to work harder to position itself as a strategic partner for Google, as Qualcomm is doing, rather than threatening the firm that currently holds so many mobile cards.

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