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Atom has always been a laptop chip. They tried to shoeshorn it to handhelds but it sucked for obvious reasons. Think Apple's chips started in iPhone, then iPads and finally very recently ramped up to Macbooks. Even Snapdragon has only very recently released a laptop worthy chip because of the design they've acquihired from Nuvia.

Basically agree.

Well, it did good enough in netbooks. It could probably have been good in tablets if they kept trying (and if non-iPad tablets really caught on).

"didn't beat" puts it mildly. Every attempt Intel made at entering the smartphone business was doomed because they were years behind ARM. Paul Thurrott confirmed this with HP when discussing the Elite x3 smartphone:

https://www.thurrott.com/hardware/64677/elite-x3-hp-takes-wi...

Apple was an interested customer, but rumors are they perceived Intel extremely arrogant. The chip would have been to iPhone.