Intel is fairly likely to buy the wireless division of German chip maker Infineon.

Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar said in a note to clients today that Intel is buying the division as part of its move into the smartphone business. It is an area that Intel needs to catch up in. Rivals, including Qualcomm, Marvell, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Broadcom and others.

Intel's own Atoms aren’t as common as chips based on the ARM architecture, which is known for its low-power processing. With Infineon’s chip business, Intel will be able to get a foothold in a lot of the smaller chips that go into mobile phones.

Infineon has the baseband chips, or radios, while Intel has application processors to handle computing tasks. Kumar said the companies have a contract, but there has been no announcement yet.

Intel is not saying anything at the moment.