Space invaders

LAS VEGAS is a city of fast bucks, fast food and fast marriages. It could also be the place where a long war was declared. On January 10th Paul Otellini, the boss of Intel, will address the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), a vast gathering of gadget-makers, sellers and aficionados in Sin City. He will introduce a phalanx of products showcasing the chips the world's largest semiconductor company most wants to hype.

Up on the stage with Mr Otellini will be not just PCs of the sort that the company has powered for decades, but also new slimline PCs known as “ultrabooks”, which are being made by the likes of Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard (HP), and even a couple of smartphones. They represent the front-line of an army of Intel-powered kit going into battle against smartphones and tablets which use processors based on designs from ARM, a British firm.

Intel and ARM, pretty much as different in size and approach as competitors can be, have carved up most of the world of microprocessors—the most lucrative bit of the $313 billion global semiconductor market—between them. Each has a well defined patch in which it is pre-eminent. Intel...