Intel muzzles iPhone attack dogs

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 24 Oct 2008 at 07:49

Intel has taken the extraordinary step of publicly rebuking its own executives for criticising the iPhone.

Intel's vice president of mobility, Shane Wall, launched an outspoken attack on the Apple handset at this week's Intel Developer Forum, claiming: "Any sort of application that requires any horsepower at all and the iPhone struggles."

He was joined by colleague Pankaj Kedia, who added that "the shortcomings of the iPhone have come from ARM [processors]."

However, on the company's somewhat ironically named Chip Shots blog, the outspoken pair's boss says his employees were out of line.

"Anand Chandrasekher issued a correction on comments made by members of his team yesterday at Intel's Developer Forum in Taiwan," the blog post reads.

"As general manager of the Group responsible for Intel's ultra-mobility products, he acknowledged that Intel's low-power Atom processor does not yet match the battery life characteristics of the ARM processor in a phone form factor; and, that while Intel does have plans on the books to get us to be competitive in the ultra low power domain - we are not there as yet.

Intel then goes on to lavish praise on the iPhone. "Apple's iPhone offering is an extremely innovative product that enables new and exciting market opportunities. The statements made in Taiwan were inappropriate, and Intel representatives should not have been commenting on specific customer designs."

Intel's hasty apology may have more to do with business politics than genuine remorse. Intel supplies the processors for the entire Mac range, but last week saw Apple ditch Intel's integrated graphics in favour of Nvidia's 9400M in certain MacBooks.

Intel will hope its humble apology might convince Apple not to further help Nividia reach its ambitious target of 30% of the integrated graphics market.