Rumors are circulating that Apple has rejected Intel’s Moorestown chips as unsuitable for their mobile device range, after Cupertino engineers decided that the Intel CPUs demanded far too much power.  According to Fudzilla, Apple have informed Intel that Moorestown needs to have one-tenth the idle power consumption it manages currently before it’ll be suitable for any of Apple’s devices.

The rejection will come as a blow for Intel, whose Atom range has been a mainstay of PC netbooks over the past eighteen months.  A win with Apple for mobile or lower-power devices would have opened up a whole new market; Intel have previously suggested that Moorestown would be ideal for high-end smartphones.

Moorestown is also expected to find a place in MIDs, and it’s feasible that Intel might have been hoping to see the platform inside Apple’s much-rumored tablet.  Instead, it’s likely that any mobile device from Apple in the near future will use a PA Semiconductor chip, the handiwork of a company Apple themselves own.