Yup, OLPC was what "woke up" Intel, making them begin to build Atoms. Frankly, Intel had the foresight to start the Atom project to hedge their bets a little bit.
They never "really" tried to compete in the smartphone market (which is ~2W), the Atom was instead always targeted at ~10W. (IIRC, Intel's real focus at that time were Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage, CULV processors at the 18W envelope. Today... known as Ultrabooks). However, as Smartphones became the next hot thing, it is now obvious that Intel has to scale the Atom down even further. And unfortunately, the netbook market imploded.
Its not all wasted however, IMO, netbooks "became" tablets. From a CPU perspective, there is little difference between Netbooks and Tablets. You want low-power consumption between 5W to 10W, and lower costs. In fact, as netbooks were "dying out", they slowly became tablets. See AsusTab Smart for example, it basically is a Netbook without a keyboard, but built with a touchscreen. (same price range as Netbooks of old, but just in tablet form).
Anyway, Intel hasn't forgotten the Smartphone market either. Thus the Atoms that worked closer to the 2W SoC benchmark... Medfield, Clovertrail, and soon to be Bay Trail Atoms. Clovertrail is winning a few benchmarks here and there, and Bay Trail will be built on Intel's latest process for once. So it looks like Intel is finally taking the smartphone market seriously. But only the last generation or so are actual attempts at a Smartphone chip... and even then, there isn't a single Atom out there that is built on Intel's latest 22nm process. That will only come from the future Bay Trail Atoms.
They never "really" tried to compete in the smartphone market (which is ~2W), the Atom was instead always targeted at ~10W. (IIRC, Intel's real focus at that time were Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage, CULV processors at the 18W envelope. Today... known as Ultrabooks). However, as Smartphones became the next hot thing, it is now obvious that Intel has to scale the Atom down even further. And unfortunately, the netbook market imploded.
Its not all wasted however, IMO, netbooks "became" tablets. From a CPU perspective, there is little difference between Netbooks and Tablets. You want low-power consumption between 5W to 10W, and lower costs. In fact, as netbooks were "dying out", they slowly became tablets. See AsusTab Smart for example, it basically is a Netbook without a keyboard, but built with a touchscreen. (same price range as Netbooks of old, but just in tablet form).
Anyway, Intel hasn't forgotten the Smartphone market either. Thus the Atoms that worked closer to the 2W SoC benchmark... Medfield, Clovertrail, and soon to be Bay Trail Atoms. Clovertrail is winning a few benchmarks here and there, and Bay Trail will be built on Intel's latest process for once. So it looks like Intel is finally taking the smartphone market seriously. But only the last generation or so are actual attempts at a Smartphone chip... and even then, there isn't a single Atom out there that is built on Intel's latest 22nm process. That will only come from the future Bay Trail Atoms.