Chipzilla has spent a fortune on getting into mobile after it dropped the ball at the beginning of the smartphone boom. But analysts are starting to warn that money is being wasted and indeed the sales of mobile chips for Intel is actually sinking.

Digitimes now says that 2015 will see just 10.8 million Intel-powered Android tablets down from 14.23 million shipped a year earlier.

Chipzilla is making money from Android handsets but only more than 10 million of which are expected to have Intel inside this year.

Over all this figure is tiny. It has been estimated that the world will make 230 million tablets and phablets this year and IDC thinks there will be 1.447 billion smartphones. So this means that Intel's cut is tiny.

What will save Intel are those two-in-one PC and tablet blends which will push Intel's overall mobile CPU sales up to 46 million a year. This is good, and means that Intel will probably continue to make money, it is just that it will not make it from tablets and smartphones.

One has to question what is Intel trying to do in those markets anyway? Tablets are dying and pretty soon will be as out of date as a tape based Walkman. Smartphones sales are expected to fall and any way the margins on those are pretty pointless. The two-in-ones are born from Intel's Core-M range which is rather natty and a much better focus for x86 anyway.

What appears to be keeping Intel interested in mobile is this stubborn belief in the Internet of Things which everyone is certain is going to be the next most important technology breakthrough.

However so far the only thing we have seen from this technology are gadgets like watches which have been greeted by a loud sounding yawn. It would be much better for Intel to walk away from the fiddly mobile stuff and focus on mobile office chips.