Poor Intel. (Insert sad emoticon.)

Its energy-saving Atom chips helped fuel the rise of netbooks. But now, smartphones and tablets are all the rage and it’s ARM that’s reaping the rewards. So dominating is ARM in mobility that Microsoft’s touch-tastic Windows 8 OS will also run on the company’s processor tech.

Now, after a seeming eternity of half-hearted initiatives aimed at countering ARM’s stranglehold, it looks like it’s finally getting its act together. How? By hitching its wagon to Android, the market share leader in mobile operating systems.

Under a partnership with Google, Intel will be working to optimize Android to work with future Atom chips. In that spirit, the chipmaker showed off a Medfield-based smartphone running Gingerbread (Android 2.3) at IDF. Finally.

Update: Now you can add a Medfield-based, Android-running tablet to the mix.

Source: Engadget