Intel actually got out of the ARM business in 2006, pretty much exactly 1 year before release of the first iPhone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale#Sale_of_P

Intel actually got out of the ARM business in 2006, pretty much exactly 1 year before release of the first iPhone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale#Sale_of_PXA_processor_line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale#Sale_of_PXA_processor_li... They apparently still hold an ARM license, but that may well just be so they can keep an eye on the competition. I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that Intel and AMD could probably produce an x86 chip that's comparable in efficiency to the ARM offerings by taking out some of the legacy cruft and substantially reducing clock speeds. After all, the Atom (and Llano) only consume around 10 watts and are still a few times faster than the current tablet CPUs. They may well enter the market at some point, but right now it's probably more profitable to carry on with their existing business.