Besides announcing another record-breaking quarter yesterday, Intel's chief executive Paul Otellini took a minute to comment on the new computing categories where Intel currently has no presence - namely, tablets. The executive specifically referenced the iPad's dominance of the market and praised Apple's "awesome" job reinventing the tablet category, but said Intel has every intention to ultimately win the space with its Atom processor platform.

Otellini admitted that tablet sales might eat into existing markets but downplayed its long-term effect. In his view, this 'new' category will mimic the netbook track: consumers will have a limited amount of discretionary income, and some will choose to purchase a tablet instead of upgrading an existing PC or purchasing some other computing device. In the end, however, Otellini believes the tablet segment will grow along with the rest of the PC market as it happened with netbooks.


He went on to assure that Intel "will use all the assets at our disposal to win this segment," adding that a number of tablet products will come to market in the coming months and quarters based on Windows, Android, and Meego operating systems, across a variety of form factors and price points, and they will be there to support them with Oak Trail. This new range of low-power Atom processors isn't expected to begin showing up in production hardware until 2011, but Otellini seems confident it will help them catch up with and eventually outclass ARM in this segment.