The Hokey Cokey Man

Atom is a symptomatic of all that its weird about Intel's diversifications. It lacks a defined use. Too feeble to be a laptop CPU, too power-hungry for the portable consumer market, Atom languishes unwanted.

Intel CFO Stacy Smith says Atom's targeted at smartphones, where ARM rules.  Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, says it's targeted at MIDs, a non-existent market. "We are creating a category of devices that doesn't exist at the moment", says Otellini, vaguely.

Then there are the curious ASSP-type products which Intel has half-announced. The idea, apparently, is to bundle up a microcontroller with some peripheral circuitry and software and sell it as an ASSP to targeted sections of the OEM base e.g. automotive, network storage, data connectivity etc. This is a weird piece of thinking. There are so many ASSP products, established, trusted, well-understood, already addressing these markets.

Intel's graphics processing market entry is, apparently, a year or two away. What is Intel bringing to this market that Nvidia, ATI or the Cell processor can't? It's unclear. But turning up a decade late, and saying you want to play, doesn't make you convincing. But we're Intel, Intel say. And that, for Intel, is argument enough.

Then there's Intel's large investments in Wimax. Wimax may be a big deal. Maybe it won't. So far Intel is involved both as a minority investor in various  network operator consortia, and as a potential chip vendor at the terminal end. It seems disinclined to go after the infrastructure end. It's a fragmented, diffused attempt to get into the wireless industry again.

Of course, with a lot of money to throw about, you can play the dilettante. Tease a bit here about a possible market entry, hint a bit there about a possible new initiative. But dilettanti eventually lose something - credibility.

And so we get this curious, stumbling figure lurching into markets and out of markets. In, out. Who does it resemble?

The hokey cokey man.