Jeff Gelles: Obama in Arizona to applaud Intel as a tech leader in American manufacturing

In technology, Intel is the ultimate inside player - so much so that it built an entire marketing campaign, "Intel Inside," around partnerships with companies that power their products with Intel microprocessors.

But on Wednesday - a day after Apple's announcement that it made a stunning $13 billion in profits in the last three months of 2011 - the California chipmaker was once again out front, in the spotlight thanks to a visit by President Obama a day after his State of the Union address.

Apple is riding high on the success of iPhones and iPads assembled in China under conditions that have lately drawn increased scrutiny. For the second time in a year, Obama was highlighting Intel's role as a technology leader that hasn't given up on American manufacturing - this time, by visiting a new plant in Chandler, Ariz., where Intel expects to employ about 4,000 people.

Apple is anything but alone in making its devices in China - that's where many of Intel's chips will wind up, often en route right back to the American marketplace inside computers, smartphones and tablets bearing the logos of Intel's many partners.

But Obama's shout-out to Intel - which helped put the silicon in Silicon Valley - highlights a company whose key role in the last half-century's technology explosion is often underplayed. Intel may not make products you can buy at Best Buy or from your wireless carrier, but it's helping design the future for a range of devices, including many poised to compete with Apple's signature iPhones and iPads.

Intel, in fact, is the company whose cofounder Gordon Moore gave the world "Moore's Law" - an observation and prediction that the number of transistors that could be fit onto an integrated circuit would double roughly every two years.

It's been nearly 50 years since Moore first offered his formulation, and although he later allowed that it would eventually run into the limits of physics, his prediction of exponential growth has so far passed the test of time.

Earlier this month, at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel CEO Paul Otellini rattled off some numbers that reflect the consequences of Moore's Law - numbers far more astounding, in their own way, than Apple's sales figures.

"Today, there are a billion transistors on a single microprocessor inside your laptop," Otellini said. He added that the next step is technology that Intel measures at a scale of 14 nanometers - 14 billionths of a meter. It's a measure so small that it brings to mind the stereotype of medieval theologians debating the dimensions of angels.

"This technology is so dense that 200 million of these 14-nanometer transistors could fit on the head of a pin," Otellini said.

In more modern terms, Otellini recalled the historic feat of technology represented by the Apollo 11 moon landing, and said: "Today, your smartphone has more computing power than existed in all of NASA in 1969."

Here's some of what Intel is doing with all that power:

Smartphones. Intel is working on Android-based smartphones with Lenovo, the Chinese computer maker that acquired IBM's personal-computer business, and Motorola Mobility, the U.S. device maker that Google agreed to acquire last year.

Lenovo's K800 is billed as the world's first "Intel-architecture-based smartphone." Among its tricks: streaming high-definition video wirelessly to a big-screen TV.

Otellini also showed off an Intel "reference device," a prototype smartphone with an 8-megapixel camera and the ability to deliver up to six hours of video playback, eight hours of talk time, and 14 days of standby time.

Ultrabooks. Intel already powers about a dozen different versions of these ultrathin, ultralight notebook computers, patterned after the MacBook Air, that many hope will reinvigorate the laptop market.

One of the newest entrants, Dell's XPS 13, is due out next month, with features such as tablet-style instant-on responsiveness and nine hours of battery life. And another Intel "reference device" takes the connection further: It's a hybrid that converts from an ultrabook to a tablet.

Otellini used it to display the product of another key Intel partner: The ultrabook/tablet runs Microsoft's new "Metro" interface, a version of its innovative, apps-based Windows Phone platform that Microsoft hopes will stir consumer interest in its latest operating system, Windows 8, due out later this year.

How well is Intel adapting to the mobile marketplace, a segment that represents more than 70 percent of Apple's sales in the last quarter and one in which Apple uses its own chips, not Intel's?

"Their weakness is the mobile sector, and they're trying to address that," says analyst Roger Entner. "It's just a different game."

But in a broader sense, Entner calls Intel "the glue that holds it all together," and cautions against counting it out.

"It's a shining example of a huge company that is still hugely innovative," he says.

That puts it in rare company. And right in there, in its own way, with Apple.