In a counterattack on rival Intel, chip designer ARM Holdings said it will collaborate with six other tech companies to help make Linux-based smart cell phones and other devices easier to use.

ARM, based in Great Britain, unveiled the collaboration at its ARM Developers Conference at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center on Wednesday. The company develops chip designs and then licenses them to chip makers and hardware firms. Many of its designs are for mobile phones or the handheld device market.

The company formed an alliance with Marvell, MontaVista, Movial, Mozilla, Samsung and Texas Instruments. Together the group will create a platform - a blueprint for software developers - to help them more quickly develop better mobile software to run on the Linux operating system.

Intel has the same market in its sights. At its Developer Forum two weeks ago, executives at the Santa Clara chip giant demonstrated that certain cell phones with ARM chip designs cannot access some Web sites, as they touted Intel’s own designs for new cell phone chips.

ARM denied Intel’s claims. “They have published a number of Web sites . . . and they have been saying ARM cannot do this,” said Bob Morris, a director of platform enablements at ARM. He said ARM found that Intel’s claims were wrong when it accessed the same Web sites with a new Nokia phone that has some features they plan to build into their new software platform.

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