A top analyst has warned Chipzilla that it should stop mucking around with mobile and sort out the PC.

Linley Gwennap, editor of the Microprocessor Report, said that the tablet and smartphone processors are a distraction for Intel. He said that mobile did not have potential to make up for the potential loss of notebook and desktop processor revenue and Chipzilla should pull finger and sort out the PC.

Gwennap said that the PC processor is in a crisis, which is partially homemade. He said that the performance of CPUs was not growing fast enough to find the interest of consumers. He said that Sandy Bridge CPU, performance is increasing at just 10 percent per year for desktops and 16 percent for laptops.

This is a far cry from the good old days of 60 percent annual performance increases and PC users have little incentive to upgrade their systems. He said that if Intel wants to remain successful it should not be worried about mobile application processors that could barely make up for five percent of Intel's processor revenue.

Instead it should be trying to make PCs more competitive again.  To do this it needs to work with Microsoft, PC vendors, and other ecosystem players. "Having redefined the PC form factor, the next step is to rework the PC’s functions to include performance-hungry capabilities such as voice/gesture recognition and intelligent agents in ways that benefit end users," he wrote.