It could be seen as mutually beneficial, even if they don't use each others products. Overall development and managerial costs are reduced for both teams. Intel gets a good vehicle to show off Atom with and possibly some buy-in from generic tablet makers, and Nokia gets a reduced developmental load for their high end smartphone OS.

As it stands, Atom is still miles behind ARM in terms of power efficiency so I don't see Nokia adopting it any time soon.

I do. Looks to me that MeeGo is Nokias way out of community controlled open source, so they can focus on Maemo much more undisturbed, the same way Google and Samsung are doing.

I see Intel has a HUGE chance & no I do not see it doomed. The Intel management has been very analytic and forward looking. The CEO sees Intel more as a Software / Services Company then as a Chip company going forward. Meego, Wind River Systems as example. Intel has thousands of Software Developers & while I am sure Meego will run on Arm I bet you that it will perform multiple times better on a Intel Architecture.

They have nothing to loose in Mobile as they are not yet existent but a lot to gain. Real Computers will not go away and so won't Servers in both areas Intel leads with about 80% Market Share and has Margins of 66(!!!)%

Intel also started investing in to mobile a long time ago (without the Arm Architecture) but it takes time to perfect a product.

It is a growing Market there is space for everyone. Intel is already going in to TV's & Set Top boxes (power not an issue) and Arm is also gaining traction (Cars, Mobiles, Fridges, Set Top Boxes....) From the last Intel earnings call

not only is atom going to struggle to compete against arm in smart-devices, it is going to struggle against low-power netbook style computers too:

http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/20...roke-the-atom/

http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/20...but-with-what/

intel has fallen in between useful market segments with atom.

It's a way of offloading redundant work. All the upstream stuff is going to be developed no matter what, and having people dedicated to the job of packaging and building up a distro whose cost you split with another company works out well.

And at least this way, if Nokia sticks to what they've said about the "open mode" for newer devices, you can use a stock build of MeeGo instead of Nokia's and have a fully open stack, unlike with Maemo.

And in exchange Nokia's resources for focusing on end user experience are greater, hopefully resulting in an improved experience and far less excuse for a bad one.

apparently intel has had two record setting quarters in a row....

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/12/i...s-home-3-bill/

hardly doomed

???

Maemo is being ramped down.

@atilla77

Well I gave my current knowledge about Intel and ARM. Well if both platforms get decent coding, then yes a superclocked A8 like I said would be neck-to-neck with Z600 in performance and in battery life. But we all know how sloppy companies code these day (*cough Galaxy S), so it could go either way.
And a much more important thing to consider is that the superclocked A8 will obviously be lower priced than the Z600, so there is no need for anyone/market to adopt Z600.

So the real question actually comes back to Medfield vs 2GHz-Dual-A9, which has better performance and battery life???

The thing is A9 has been unveiled a long* time ago, so we actually know what to expect. But we know nothing (or very little) about Intel's future plans with Medfield. If the Medfield can truly out-perform the 2GHz-Dual-A9 and maintain reasonable battery life, I see Intel has a bright future in the tablet market. If it cannot, it must offer similar performance at a greater battery life. And if it cannot do either one, it must really pull some strings, work its arse off, offer it cheaper and get it into the market and this is what Intel is notoriously known for. Otherwise, the axe will be waiting!

Honestly I can agree that the devil is in the details; even though the itch is to shout !!ARM!!, the answer is actually not as clear cut and will actually depend on software a great deal.

And this is why it is so important for Intel to invest in MeeGo (which was planned several years earlier) to make it run more efficiently on their Atom systems than on any RISC or ARM platform... it's called tactics.

But what I think Intel really stuffed-up on is their timing. I think the MeeGo platform should've been fully finished (base, development, future plans) last year and tablets with Z600 and MeeGo should've hit mass-market early this year. Honestly, they should've rushed it. This is just so they could get the one-step ahead of Gingerbread (the tablet Android), and harvest developers, consumers and OEM's to the MeeGo side of things. At least they would've used that 6months and begin to roll out a software update to MeeGo that would patch those mistakes caused by the rushed launch. I mean that would allow a company like Acer/Motorola to launch their polished MeeGo tablets for this years Xmas.
Every day that passes, things look much more difficult for MeeGo.

plus they gain a common portion from mobile/tablet/netbook apps that can be easily compiled to every platform because of meego requirements. so it should be in par to apples approach ipad - iphone - ipod touch - fag tv etc.

@Kangal: Just to give a bit of context, tablet computing this time around last year was not 'hot' at all.

Remember Microsoft's Tablet PC success?
Nokia Internet Tablet's market success?

It's arguable that until iPad's release (april 2010), the market did not know of 'good' ui implementation to be paired with tablets. All other tablets in the market at the time were using a type of windows, shoehorned into the tablet, giving bad UI+UX. Microsoft had been at it (trying to launch tablet computing) since 2002 with no significant progress.

Btw, Intel does not have to worry of osborne effect, so they should be baring everything in their mid-term roadmaps to entice all potential customers (their OEM partners) and developers.