Spurned Intel pans iPhone's Internet performance

Intel's romance with Apple appears to have gone sour.

Company executives have started including the iPhone as one of their prime examples of smart phones that don't run "the full Internet" because they don't use an Intel chip, according to a report out of the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei from our friends down under at ZDNet Australia.

This specious argument -- that ARM-based chips aren't man enough to run the Internet -- is nothing new from Intel, but the decision to highlight the iPhone as part of that argument is.

Intel has been trying to wedge its way into future mobile computers by taking on ARM, which designs cores that power more than 90 per cent of all mobile phones in the world. Its argument is that since the PC-based Internet experience is run by Intel's x86 architecture, Intel's chips are the only possible option for future sophisticated mobile computers.

But as Engadget points out, few people complain about the iPhone's inability to run "the full Internet". Rather, the most frequent criticism of the iPhone's Internet-running ability is probably that it can't play Flash content -- but that has more to do with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' belief that Adobe's Flash Lite isn't good enough for the iPhone than any technical limitations on the part of the ARM processor. In fact, Adobe is believed to have a Flash player for the iPhone all ready to go if and when Apple decides to approve its inclusion on the iPhone.

When it first broached this argument last year, Intel refused to publicly identify specific smart phones it used in an IDF keynote presentation, which damned ARM-based smart phones as error-prone when browsing the Internet, saying it didn't want to embarrass anyone.

At the time, Intel probably thought it could one day win Apple over to its side when the Moorestown chip arrived, and it was still smitten with its hot new paramour that made old lovers Dell and HP look impossibly lame.

But Apple decided not to wait for Intel, doubling down with its bet on the ARM architecture by snapping up chip design firm P.A. Semi -- Apple put the firm to work on future CPUs based on the ARM architecture for the iPhone and iPod touch. Apple then took the further step of dumping Intel's integrated graphics chipsets from the MacBook, highlighting (once again) just how far Intel has to go to make a competitive graphics chipset.

And so suddenly, the iPhone is a prime example of a smart phone that just doesn't have what it takes, according to Intel's Shane Wall. "Any sort of application that requires any horsepower at all and the iPhone struggles," he said.

The thing is, developers, customers and carriers don't seem too bothered. As The Inquirer's Paul Hales observes, "ARM has chips in over a billion mobile Internet devices and Intel's are in, ooh, half a dozen or so."

Hell hath no fury like a chip-maker scorned.