IBM’s renewed Cell collaboration with Sony pressures Intel

"So do you imagine that Intel and Apple and IBM and even Billy G haven’t sat round the table and tried to figure out a strategy to foil the Japanese? The Xbox won’t stop the PS3, no matter how much Microsoft subsidises the wee beastie. There will be no Intel chip nestling in a future Playstation. The only hope it seems was for Big Blue to step into the breach and deal with the Japanese threat.

And so the staid old giant became the console king. Its dominance in that area will have led it to toss Apple’s fairly measly business in Intel's direction. But it will have chipmaker and its allies hounding after it now, as the battlelines are drawn up for the scrap to decide whose name sits on the convergence box par excellence."