Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) may have a Windows refresh in enterprise computer buying in 2014 to thank for the bulk of its success. The processor giant has still lagged in its effort to get the mobile chip operations really ramped up, a situation that caused much criticism before 2014. Intel may finally be on its way to getting the mobile chip efforts on track.

Two different Wall Street analyst reports point to better developments in Intel’s mobile chip efforts. One is from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the other from Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo was not exactly making an investment rating call in its semiconductor weekly update, but the firm was positive on Intel’s mobile chip efforts.

The Merrill Lynch call is a reiterated Buy rating, also reiterating Intel as a Top Pick. The firm even raised its price objective to $43 from $36 in the call. Merrill Lynch also raised its earnings estimates above the consensus, to $2.39 per share in 2015 and $2.65 per share for 2016.

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Merrill Lynch feels that Intel investors will get comfortable with the PC foundation as a core and will then refocus their views on Intel’s dominance in data center, networking, Internet of Things, security and its leading-edge manufacturing capabilities. The Merrill Lynch investment thesis was shown to have four legs:

1. Investors underappreciate PC stabilization.
2. The Mobile division can be restructured by 2016, driving $3+ in earnings per share, 20% above Street.
3. Intel can continue to secularly grow/dominate data center.
4. The stock is highly under-owned, held by only 27% of U.S. large-cap fund managers, with about 60% underweight relative to the benchmark — similar to the re-rating in pharma stocks when patent cliff challenges were addressed.

Wells Fargo’s current rating on Intel is Outperform, and its valuation range is very wide at $35 to $42 per share. Wells Fargo’s weekly chip report said:

Last week, Intel announced agreements with Chinese government entity Tsinghua Unigroup for Intel to work with Spreadtrum on x86 based SoCs for mobile phones. … Intel and Tsinghua Unigroup have a series of agreements. Intel will invest up to about $1.5 billion for a minority stake of approximately 20% of a holding company which will own the Chinese technology companies. Spreadtrum and RDA Microelectronics. Spreadtrum and Intel will be working together to design and sell Intel x86 based SoCs for mobile phones. Initial products are expected to be available in the second half of 2015.

The quote that stood out the most was:

We believe Intel has an excellent strategy for driving x86 processors into the ARM-dominated tablet and smartphone processor markets. … Intel is used in almost all of the Windows tablets in the world, with the exception of a small number of Windows RT tablets. Dell, Acer, Asustek and Toshiba have recently announced Android tablets that are powered by Intel x86 processors.

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Intel shares were up by 1.6% to $34.82 in midday trading on Monday. The 52-week range is $22.48 to $35.56, but note that analysts are still behind the curve here as Intel’s consensus analyst target price from Thomson Reuters is right at $34. The highest analyst price target on Intel is up at $50.

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