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Cracks developing in the Windows-Intel (Wintel) relationship

A number of published reports today had comments from a visibly upset Paul Otellini, who just lost a customer in Nokia, when it opted for the Windows Phone 7.

Nokia dumped its Meego OS -- which was under development with Intel -- in favor of WP7 earlier this week. Otellini cursed just like Yahoo's CEO (Carol Bartz) after he heard the news of Nokia's move to WP7, PC World states.

Trashing Microsoft, Otellini on a separate call said he would have rather opted for Android if Meego wasn't good enough, per Bloomberg. But money talks, and Nokia fell to the highest bidder, Paul O. said.

The honesty in refreshing. In an age where there's a lot of hedging, Otellini is being a man and speaking his mind. I have faith when he says Meego will make it despite Nokia's betrayal, and that there are a number of device form factors that have yet to be developed.

So there are cracks developing between the Wintel relationship that 90 percent of the world's PC users have gotten used to. Linux has created that drift, and let's see it goes further. Intel will continue to develop Meego to work with its chips, while Microsoft extends its Windows OS to Arm.

But Intel will continue backing Meego, and the company has bucketloads of cash on hand. So Microsoft buys, Intel innovates. We could see a pattern until someone's pocket goes dry.