The computer industry has hit upon its Next Big Thing. It is called a phone.

Emboldened by Apple’s success with its iPhone, many PC makers and chip companies are charging into the mobile-phone business, promising new devices that can pack the horsepower of standard computers into palm-size packages.

The companies are also shifting gears because their technological feats of the last two decades  smaller laptops with faster chips to deliver snazzier graphics  no longer impress consumers, who increasingly find their three-year-old computers adequate for everyday tasks.

“The action is really with the smartphones where everyone is competing to cram the most features into a phone,” said Linley Gwennap, a veteran chip industry analyst and head of the Linley Group. “I think of PCs as just kind of boring these days.”

The new smartphones promised by PC companies will, among other things, handle the full glory of the Internet, power two-way video conferences, and stream high-definition movies to your TV.