Intel today has hired Palm’s Senior VP of Product Development Mike Bell. The executive will now be the Director of Smartphone Product Development and will develop smartphone reference designs to help get Atom-based phones to market sooner. His new team with be placed within the Ultra Mobility Group that had previously been limited to MIDs .
Intel has struggled to produce an x86 processor small and power-efficient enough to get into a smartphone and may not have one until 2011 despite Atom Z600.
Bell is a former Apple employees brought over to Palm in 2007 by former Apple veteran Jon Rubinstein, and had 16 years at Apple.
