Hasta La Gadget!

Intel’s attempt to get inside cellphones will take just a little bit longer.Though the company had hoped to get smartphones with Intel chips in the hands of consumers this year, it is likely that the first phones powered by Intel will debut early next year.

Mobile handsets featuring Intel processors are likely to be shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in next January or at the Mobile World Congress conference in February.

“That would clearly be the window of opportunity for us,” Intel CTO Justin Rattner told Wired.com.

In May, Intel showed its new chip codenamed Moorestown for mobile devices. The company said the chip would be extremely power efficient, while offering enough processing power for features such as video conferencing and HD video.

Though Intel’s chips power most desktops and notebooks, the company’s silicon is glaringly absent in the fast growing category of smartphones and tablets. Worldwide, companies shipped 54.7 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2010, up 56.7 percent from the same quarter a year ago, estimates IDC.  Most talked about smartphones today from companies such as Motorola and HTC that are powered by chips based on Intel rival ARM’s architecture.

Intel has tried its hand in the phone-chip business earlier, with little success. In 2006, the company sold its XScale ARM-based division to Marvell. More recently, it tried to pitch its current generation of Atom processors to smartphone makers but the chips were not accepted because they consumed too much power for phone use.

Moorestown processors can beat the competition, says Intel. Rattner hopes the chips will also go beyond smartphones and into tablets.

So far, Apple has sold more than 3 million iPads in just three months since the product’s launch. Apple uses its own chip for the iPad.

Rattner says tablets using Intel chips are on their way and will be available to consumers by the end of the year.

“Almost all the tablets at Computex (a trade show for PC makers held in Taiwan every year) were Intel-based devices,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of interest and activity in the tablet space.”

Yet Rattner says he is “cautious” in his hopes for the tablet market. Rattner does not own an iPad, but has an iPhone 3G S.

“A lot of people are saying that the tablet is the next netbook,” he says. “I am not so sure.” More than 85 million netbooks have been sold, since the devices became popular about three years ago.

Netbooks appealed to consumers because of their price, portability and their ability to offer a computing experience comparable to a notebook, say Rattner.

“With tablets, their utility remains to be seen,” he says. “The first generation of tablets including are missing some important things. The absence of a camera is especially baffling in the iPad.”

The iPad may have its flaws but for consumers it’s the only choice for now — unless you count the very flawed JooJoo.

Some tablet makers were waiting for Moorestown chips but Intel has already started production and handing it to manufacturers, says Rattner.

“Apple’s gotten everyone’s attention and they have set that bar,” he says. “For others now coming to market, they have to have something substantially more capable than the iPad and it is going to take time to get there.”

Photo: liewcf/Flickr

See Also:

• Why Intel’s Processors Aren’t Big on Cellphones
• Next-Gen Cellphones Will Run 1080p Video, 3-D Games
• Intel Introduces Ultra-Low-Power Processor for Smartphones
• Intel, LG Partner To Create New Mobile Internet Device