It should not be forgotten that Intel is also trying to take on Apple and the iPad. As of now, we’ve heard a lot about the variety of Windows 8 that runs on power-sipping chips from suppliers like Nvidia – Windows RT. For example, the first Microsoft Surface tablets, due by October 26, will run RT. Then again RT does not run all of that old Windows software that companies rely on. Intel’s tablet platform, announced today, does.

Windows 8 Tablets Are Different

“It brings over what you already have…millions of desktop applications,” Chris Walker, general manager of Intel’s application processors for the mobile and communications group, said in a phone interview. And that renders Windows 8 tablets from Hewlett-Packad, Dell, Lenovo, and Asus immediately usable at corporations. “I can access my back-end ERP [enterprise resource planning] system, updating it in real time, pulling down all of the corporate information I need and managing like I do on a notebook,” he said. And this “flexibility” between customer and corporate worlds is what distinguishes Intel-based Windows 8 tablets and convertibles from Apple’s iPad, Walker said.

Intel has one more long-term ace up its sleeve. It is able to take advantage of in-house chip manufacturing, which is probably the most advanced in the world. Apple, by comparison, must farm out chip manufacturing for its A series processors to outside companies — that it has no direct control over — like legal-foe Samsung. Intel currently supplies processors to all of Apple’s Mac and MacBook lines. And, needless to say, it probably wouldn’t mind making chips for future iPhones and iPads.