The trouble with Intel is it thinks it's in the chip business. (Make this image your wallpaper here.)

It's not.

Intel is in the platform business. Intel succeeds when its chips become an open platform for innovation. Microsoft did this for Intel in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result Intel dominates the PC space.

But in the wireless world Intel has lost the plot.

Take the new PXA27x family, announced this week. It's a fine chip, and delivers to cellphone makers everything they say they want. Things like WiFi, and the ability to create 4 Megapixel camera phones.

The problem is these are features. Worse, they're not even unique features. TI is going to have these features, thanks to nVidia. I'm certain Broadcom is going to match these features.

What Intel has yet to do, in its communications and wireless division, is create a platform. This means making decisions, among operating systems for starters, and delivering a single set of development tools. Those tools must go, not just to the people who make the hardware the chips go into (like the cellphone guys and the OEMs), but to people who will create applications in which those chips play just one part.

What the industry most needs is a Unifying Field Theory, a set of firm standards, set by one company, that will allow software and hardware developers to create Always-On applications for a broad market. For Intel, this means that, by making firm choices, and pushing that platform, they have a huge opportunity, the biggest they've seen since the creation of the IBM PC over 20 years ago.

The question is, will they take it? Or will they leave that job to someone else?