Intel has been knocking on the door of the mobile handset application processor market for the past decade with little success, but this week, the chip giant announced it now has the chipset it needs to mount a serious push into the smartphone and tablet segments.

Moreover, mobile industry giants, such as Nokia and Orange, are now taking Intel seriously. Intel was recently identified by Yves Maitre, group devices director at Orange, as one of six cash-rich North American technology giants (Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm and RIM) prepared to spend hundreds of millions of marketing dollars this year to carve out a stronger position in the burgeoning smartphone market.

Of the six, Intel is currently in the weakest position and needs a breakthrough soon. On paper, Intel’s long-awaited, second generation Atom-platform (originally known as Moorestown) looks like it might deliver that breakthrough. Supporting processors running at speeds of up to 1.5 GHz for high-end smartphones and up to 1.9 GHz for tablets, the platform will deliver between 1.5 and 3 times the computing performance of today’s leading smartphones, according to Intel. The chip giant claims it will support between two and four times richer graphics and more than four times higher JavaScript performance than today’s top smartphones, as well as supporting full HD 1080p video decoding and 720p HD video recording.

That’s all fine and dandy and pretty much what you would expect from Intel with its track record of pushing PC performance forward. But what about power consumption – Intel’s longstanding Achilles heel? Intel says the new platform, supported by a 1500mAh battery, can run for ten days on standby, can playback audio for up to two days and provide between four and five hours of browsing and video battery life.

Good enough? Perhaps. The idle and audio playback metrics look to be ample, but four or five hours of browsing and video playback would mean Atom-based smartphones may have less staying power than the iPhone 3GS, which Apple says can deliver five hours of Internet usage on 3G and nine hours on Wi-Fi using a 1400 mAh battery. This is important because the biggest gripe that iPhone users have is battery life, which deteriorates with time and use.

Of course, Intel would argue that consumers will be willing to compromise on battery life when they see the kind of multimedia performance that Atom-based smartphones and tablets will be capable of. Moreover, battery life might become less important if and when all new handsets are using the same chargers, which would make it easier for consumers to top-up their devices’ batteries while on move.

Software, software, software

Another question is whether Intel can win enough backing from the all-important software industry. Although Intel says that its new platform supports Android, MeeGo (being developed by Nokia and Intel in partnership) and Moblin, these operating systems still account for a relatively small part of the smartphone market.

It is not clear to me whether Intel’s Atom-based processors will have enough of a performance-edge to persuade enough of the mobile software ecosystem, already grappling with far too much fragmentation, to embrace another platform. Ironically, the application processor is one of the few aspects of handset technology where there is a degree of standardization. Unlike Intel, nearly all the major suppliers of mobile handset chipsets build their processors using core technology from ARM. Moreover, Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson and others either have, or are developing, 1GHz plus smartphone platforms capable of supporting impressive 3D graphics and HD video. Intel is also making a play for the high-end of the smartphone market at a time when sales of low-end smartphones are growing fastest and may attract the most attention from software developers.

Intel can probably count on Nokia and some of its long-standing partners in the PC industry, such as Acer and Dell, to use the new Atom platform to help them try and build a convincing rival to Apple’s iPad. But sales of tablet computers are likely to simply cannibalise sales of netbooks, which use Intel’s first generation Atom platform. If that is the case, Intel would really end up defending its existing territory, rather than making serious inroads into the core mobile device market.

As Maitre of Orange flagged, Intel has the cash. But does it have enough industry support?

This article was first published on the GSMA’s Mobile Innovation Exchange