Outgoing CEO of Intel, Paul Otellini, has disclosed that he has some regrets while leading the company. He revealed in an interview with The Atlantic that an Intel chip could have powered the first iPhone, but there were circumstances that didn't allow it to happen. Had the first iPhone launched with Intel inside, the smartphone market could have turned out differently, and maybe Intel would be in the leadership position and not ARM.

Otellini said to the Atlantic:

"We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we'd done it."

"The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do... At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought."

What is strange about what Otellini says, is that Intel has only just found a way to make mobile chip that consume low power, so we doubt Apple would go with the company unless it planned to place a massive battery inside the first iPhone and destroy the design.

The chip Intel had at the time was codenamed Silverstone it was basically a mobile version of the Atom processor found in netbooks. Intel admitted that it wasn't good enough compared to ARM when it came to battery performance, so yet again Otellini's comment proves to be way off the charts. Still, Intel could find its way in a future iPhone now that the company has finally come up with a chip that doesn't threaten to burn a hole in any mobile device it plays a role in.