When it comes to the mobile market, no handset has Intel chips in it. The largest chipmaker in the world even invested in joint project with Nokia to develop an entirely OS, but now that those deal flopped due to the latter’s partnership with Microsoft, Intel has plans to make its own phone. The Ovi Store just passed the 5 million downlads per day milestone, and as Nokia preps to expand the store to Windows Phone 7 apps, Intel is doing some planning of its own.

According to some sources, Intel has designed a handset equipped with version of its Atom microprocessor, and the Chinese ZTE Corp may be the one who will manufacture it.

“Intel has supplied a design for the phone, based on a version of its Atom microprocessor, that may go on sale in China, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the project hasn’t been made public.”

Intel’s main competitor is AMD, who currently has the largest share of the mobile chip market. Still, the former’s partnership with the eighth largest manufacturer in the world may just be a golden opportunity to break into the mobile market. The chipmaker is looking for partners to help it break into this exponentially growing industry, though a manufacturer may not have been your first or second guess.

Neither Intel nor ZTE Corp spokespeople declined the rumors.

Even though the specific Atom version was not specified, there is a very high chance it’s all about Oak Trail. This is the latest version of the Atom chip unveiled yesterday – the microprocessor is 60 percent smaller and consumes a lot less energy than previous version. This is probably what convinced Google to team up with the chipmaker to run Honeycomb on tablets equipped with Oak Trail, and what’s behind the whopping 35 tablets from Lenovo, Fujitsu, Samsung and Motion Computing expected to debut with these chips. Good news for Intel, and not as good news for AMD.

Going back to Intel’s mobile OS MeeGo, the company hasn’t given up on its investment just yet. The chipmaker teamed up  with Tencent, one of China’s largest Internet firms, to develop products and services around the platform using of course Atom.