Intel apologises to Apple, ARM for iPhone attack

Chipmaker Intel has released an apology for comments made by its executives this week on the inadequacies of the iPhone and the ARM processor driving it.

At the company's developer forum in Taipei, Shane Wall, Intel's vice president of the mobility group and director of strategic planning, platform architecture and software in the ultramobility group, had remarked on the iPhone's performance. "Any sort of application that requires any horsepower at all and the iPhone struggles," he said.

Pankaj Kedia, director of ecosystems for Intel's ultramobility group, blamed the device's lack of speed on the phone's ARM processor. "The shortcomings of the iPhone are not because of Apple. The shortcomings of the iPhone have come from ARM."

Intel senior vice president Anand Chandrasekher yesterday issued what he said was a correction of the executives' words, saying that Intel's Atom processor had not yet matched the battery-life characteristics of the rival ARM processor for devices the size of a phone.

"While Intel does have plans on the books to get us to be competitive in the ultra-low-power domain, we are not there as yet," he said.

The olive branch was also extended to Apple. "Secondly, Apple's iPhone offering is an extremely innovative product that enables new and exciting market opportunities."

Chandrasekher said the comments made by Intel executives Shane Wall and Pankaj Kedia this week at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei had been inappropriate and that Intel representatives should not have commented on specific customer designs.

The comments came just as Apple reported that booming sales of the device made it account for 39 percent of the company's business.

Apple hasn't been frightened to give Intel the cold shoulder in the past, such as earlier this month when it said the new Apple MacBook and MacBook Air will both come with Nvidia graphics instead of the Intel integrated graphics used in older models.