The company quietly stopped selling its Intel Pro/Wireless 2011, 2011B, 2000/5000 and Xircom Wireless branded products in February 2003, according to its Web site.
"We transitioned from our branded products to providing building blocks for other products," Dan Francisco, an Intel spokesman, said on Thursday.
The chipmaker in March introduced Centrino, which is a bundle of chips that consists of Intel's Pentium M chip, chipset and wireless module.
All the major PC makers, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and IBM, use Centrino technology in some of their notebooks.
Intel kicked off a $300m (£190m) marketing campaign earlier this year to promote Centrino and wireless networking. The company has also helped PC makers develop wireless networking products by creating reference designs for the gear, such as the Intel Media Adapter.
However, Intel's enthusiasm about wireless networking may have been too much, too soon, according to Intel president Paul Otellini.
"Wi-Fi is in danger of being overhyped, and to some degree we may be guilty of that by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on our Centrino advertising campaign," he said earlier this week at the Telecosm Conference.
Otellini added that the popularity of Wi-Fi has led to tremendous pricing pressure for chips, but that's the nature of the business.
"That's life," he said. "Welcome to the semiconductor business."
Talkback
WiFi in trains, in airports, public places. Great idea in theory. But the practice? Armed with my Airport-oaded 12" PowerBook, I tried logging on in London's Heathrow Airport last week. Bing! My computer recognized the network right away. A BTopen window on my browser then opened to inform me I had to subscribe if I wanted to log on, surf and collect/send email. Twenty minutes later, I was still trying to subscribe as BT kept telling there was a system error. No indication of where I could buy a 1-hour connection pass. Another 15 minutes passed, time to rush for the plane. Game over!
In Marseilles, where I live, there's an ongoing free access experiment in the town centre. But my computer has yet to pick up the signal.
No wonder Intel says WiFi's being over-hyped. Providers just aren't responding to the demand, or are communicating very badly.