Intel and Nokia are expected this morning to announce a deal that will bring Atom processors to the manufacturer of the world's best-selling family of mobile devices.

A Bloomberg report is leading to speculation that Nokia is planning a wireless-enabled netbook or will build Atom-based smartphones or similar devices.

With all the hoopla over smartphones, it's easy for forget that Nokia remains the world's largest mobile device maker. Most handsets sold today are not smartphones, but that may change as a long-term result of today's announcement.

It's not clear what Nokia will do with the Atom chip, darling of netbook manufacturers. The low-power, low-cost processor isn't powerful enough to desktops or laptops, but works well in less processor-intensive applications.

David Coursey tweets as techinciter.