I think they've improved in this regard: they've added an independent microcontroller inside the core(which will probably run the arduino layer).This will solve compatibility and real time issues.

This is in general targeted to a bunch of chips that integrate a microprocessor and a microcontroller and are usually fabricated in 65nm-45nm. With it's process advantage(22nm finfet) , intel can offer orders of magnitude lower sleep currents, some nice decrease on power(depending on x86 vs arm details), and more power in general. All interesting to embedded guys.

But they still have to create a large library of peripherals and support it(which they might solve by creating a few speedy cores and let the crowd code and share/support peripherals), add analog blocks, and gain the trust of the embedded community as a reliable long term supplier(which might be the one thing intel couldn't solve - because of it's past as an unreliable embedded supplier).

The second option is that this is mainly to motivate other embedded chip companies guys to use it's fabs.

Anyway ,i'm grabbing the popcorn.