Rumours of Intel's demise have been greatly exaggerated it appears, as the chip giant seems set to quell suggestions that it cannot survive due to the boom in mobile computing by joining the party itself.

After announcing that its first quarter earnings rose by 29 per cent to $3.16 billion, its shares closed up 7.8 per cent.

But the rise in share price may also have a lot to do with the fact that Intel's chief executive Paul Otellini used the earnings announcement to confirm that the tech company would be getting friendly with Google and allowing Honeycomb to work on its chips.

"We've received the Android code - the Honeycomb version of Android source code - from Google, and we're actively doing the port on that," Otellini said.

Expect a wave of Intel based Honeycomb tablets to arrive in the next few months then as Otellini also said that he expected Intel "to be able to ramp those [Honeycomb] machines over the course of this year for a number of customers" and admitted that Intel based smartphones were on the horizon too.

"I would be very disappointed if we didn't see Intel-based phones for sale 12 months from now," he said.

It's new territory for Intel, that's for sure - but it's also a brand that the mainstream population is familiar with, so we'd expect nothing but success.

It'll be interesting to see which manufacturers are first to welcome Intel aboard the mobile bandwagon.