CES: New Intel Mobile Internet Platform To Challenge Nokia, Apple, Sony, Etc.CES: New Intel Mobile Internet Platform To Challenge Nokia, Apple, Sony, Etc.

All one has to do is look at the success and buzz that Apple's iTouch (and iPhone), Nokia's 810, and Sony's PSP are getting for their lightweight wireless Internet browsing capabilities to know that there's an opportunity for Intel to sell some prefabricated guts to system vendors that want in. Here at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel showed just that in its new mobile Internet platform.

The new platform from Intel basically allows any system manufacturer to craft a unique industrial design around Intel's guts in order to start competing with Apple, Nokia, Sony and other vendors like them. Shown in the video is a Lenovo-made prototype that uses the platform which is based on Intel's 45 nanometer technology. That prototype is roughly the same Internet tablet that will be sold en masse to spectators at the upcoming Olympics in Beijing (Lenovo is based in China).

Perhaps even more interesting is how, when you think about the existing products in this segment, the operating system is largely irrelevant to the end user. Very few people know or care what's running under the hood of Apple's iTouch (and iPhone), Nokia's 810, or Sony's PSP. They just want stuff that works. So, not surprisingly, Intel is showing the new platform in pretty much the same fashion -- where the user experience is the main story and the operating system is left for spec sheets. As it turns out, its Linux that's running under the hood of the device that was shown to me at CES (seen in the above video) by Intel's Global Internet Segment Manager Dan Monahan.

According to Monahan, the consumer target prototype being shown here at CES is just an example of the sorts of initiatives he's involved in at Intel. Much the same way Intel has a "bundle" for building consumer-targeted mobile Internet devices (Intel calls these MIDs), Intel also has a similar bundle for Ultra Mobile PCs (currently called the Ultra Mobile Platform 2007).