Intel takes a pot-shot at iPhone's ARM processor

It's pretty well-known which companies are providing hardware for the iPhone, even if they're not allowed to boast about it.

However, there's nothing to stop companies who AREN'T in the iPhone letting rip. Take Intel, for example, which has just slammed the iPhone's ARM-based processor publicly.

"The shortcomings of the iPhone are not because of Apple. The shortcomings of the iPhone have come from ARM," said Intel's director of ecosystems for its ultra-mobility group, Pankaj Kedia, talking at Intel's Developer Forum in Taipei.

He went on to say that "the smartphone of today is not very smart... the problem they have today is that they use ARM."

And there's more. Mobility group VP Shane Wall also slated the iPhone's processor. "Any sort of application that requires any horsepower at all and the iPhone struggles," he said in an interview. "If you want to run full Internet, you're going to have to run an Intel-based architecture."

Just the usual cut-and-thrust of corporate competition? Sour grapes? Or the latest evidence of Intel's ambition to achieve similar dominance to that it's enjoyed in the PC and laptop market in the past?

There hasn't been much talk about the gaming capabilities of the Intel-based Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) that are heading our way, but given that games fall into precisely the category of an application that requires "any sort of horsepower at all", we wonder if Intel will turn its attention to games soon.