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Intel Corp. has launched a new chip for tablet computers, as the world’s most powerful semiconductor company aims to become a contender in the market for mobile chips.

Intel’s chips are in 80 percent of laptops and desktop PCs, but it’s had less success getting its chips into smaller devices such as cellphones and tablets. Known for pushing the processing speeds of its chips to the limit, energy efficiency has now become critical for Intel as gadgets and their batteries get smaller, testing the limits of engineering in a different way. And with more consumers starting to opt to buy tablets instead of upgrading their PCs, Intel is looking to diversify its revenue sources.

Intel’s chips have been maligned as too power-hungry for the smallest of mobile devices, a criticism Intel is hoping its new chips address. Intel is trying to elbow in to a mobile market dominated by lower-power processors from companies such as Qualcomm Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. Apple Inc. designs its own chip for the iPad.

Intel also faces a challenge in that mobile chips are generally built around a different chip design, from a company called ARM Holdings Inc., than the so-called x86 design that Intel uses. Intel said Monday that more than 35 tablet and “hybrid” computers are being built on its newest chip, which is part of the Atom family of chips.

As for smartphones, Intel says a processor for that market is scheduled for release later this year. Intel, based in Santa Clara, California, has not announced specifications for those chips.

Intel has a history of dabbling in, and retreating from, the wireless business, so the company’s success in this market is not a foregone conclusion.

It sold its mobile-chip business in 2006, then last year bought the wireless-chip division of Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG for $1.4 billion. With that deal, Intel bought its way back in to a booming market, but only got a bit player. The Infineon division, while notching some high-profile wins such as Apple’s iPhone, only owned about 5 percent of the total market for processors and other communications chips for mobile phones, according to Gartner Inc.

Analysts are split about Intel’s prospects. Some say Intel is too late to the game to score any major market share. Others caution that Intel, with $11.7 billion in net income last year on $43.6 billion in revenue, has plenty of money to pour into making its mobile division a winner.

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Microsoft Corp. found a new way to lash out at the world’s Google Inc. on Monday, extending the hostilities between two of the most prominent corporations in the technology industry.

Microsoft claimed Google has been misleading customers about the security certification of its suite of software programs for governments.

Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, David Howard, blogged on Monday about a newly unsealed court document that shows that “Google Apps for Government” hasn’t been certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act. Google’s website claims it has, and the company has attested to that in court documents.

“It’s time for Google to stop telling governments something that is not true,” Howard wrote.

The documents are part of a Google lawsuit alleging that it was improperly frozen out of competing for a U.S. Department of Interior contract to build a new e-mail system for 85,000 employees – a contract Microsoft won. A judge earlier sided with Google’s belief that the bidding was rigged to favor Microsoft, and issued a preliminary injunction with the two sides duke it out.

Google insists it’s not deceiving anyone, since a less-robust version of the product has already been certified under FISMA.

“We did not mislead the court or our customers,” the company said in a statement, noting that “Google Apps” received a FISMA clearance in July 2010, and that “Google Apps for Government” is “the same system with enhanced security controls that go beyond FISMA requirements.”

The documents show that Google is in the process of applying for certification for “Google Apps for Government.”

The controversy illustrates the wide range of complaints and tactics Google and Microsoft are using to attack each other. Their enmity has grown as Microsoft encroaches on Google’s search turf and Google goes calling on Microsoft’s customers to sell them programs such as email and word processing.

The maneuvering has ranged from a “gotcha”-type stunt in which Google accused Microsoft in February of copying Google’s search results, to Microsoft – long a target of antitrust complaints – filing its first formal antitrust complaint against a rival by arguing to European authorities that Google is abusing its dominance to freeze out rival services.

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Amazon has just entered the streaming music business with the launch of Cloud Player, a music player that lets anyone upload their music to Amazon’s servers and play them via the web or Android.

The new Cloud Player service adds a new “Save to Amazon Cloud Drive” button for saving MP3s to the cloud, as well as an option to upload music from a hard drive to a user’s Cloud Drive.

Users are given 5 GB of free storage, but can get 20 GB if they purchase an album through Amazon. It’s $1 per GB after that.

Cloud Player comes in two flavors, an app for the web and an Android app counterpart. Both players allow users to upload their music, create playlists and organize their music.

And because it’s a cloud-based platform, users can access their music and settings from any compatible computer or Android device.

The most comparable service to Cloud Drive is probably Grooveshark, which also lets you upload your music, though Amazon has several major advantages in its MP3 store, its longstanding payment system and its stronger brand recognition.

Google and Apple have been rumored to be hard at work on their own cloud-based players, but it looks like Amazon beat them to the punch. Amazon’s Cloud Player will certainly face a stiff challenge when they launch their own streaming music services, especially given Google’s control over Android and Apple’s control over iPhone and iTunes.

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