Will consumers want to carry an additional device around just to surf the net, especially if they have a phone that already does this? Intel (NSDQ: INTC) is hoping that consumers will want their desktop surfing experienced mimicked on a portable device, one that the cramped quarters of a cell phone just can’t deliver. Today, at its developer event in Shanghai, China, the chip giant is formally launching its line of Atom processors, first unveiled in early March, which have been built to power what Intel has coined mobile internet devices, or MIDs, for short. As the NYT notes, this is Intel’s way of trying to make up for having missed the boat on supplying chips for mobile phones and a way to try to wedge itself back into a market that is fast becoming “the hottest spot in the consumer electronics business in a post-PC era.” (Two years ago, it sold its mobile processor business Xscale to the Marvell Technology Group).

The battery power-sipping chips are especially small and inexpensive to produce, using a fraction of the wattage that laptops chips typically consume. On the upside for Intel, the chips are obviously very compatible with the company’s laptop and desktop processors for which most of the web’s software is written. On the downside, the chips are aimed at data—not voice—and thus, shuts Intel out of the smartphone market. Can these devices take off without voice? As the NYT points out its really too early in the game to tell. While palmtop PCs never really inspired consumers to buy them in any significant numbers and the PDA market has all but collapsed as smartphones superseded PDAs, more and more mainstream PC makers are trying to shrink the size and price of laptops, offering web surfing and a few basic applications.

Of course, there’s a reason that Intel’s showing off the devices in China. In emerging countries such as China where desktop PCs and laptops don’t have the penetration that they do in say the US or Europe, these devices might actually make headway. News site Pacific Epoch is reporting today that Taiwanese device maker BenQ is in talks with China Mobile to deliver an Intel powered MID to the network operator’s stores by September.