Writing on the blog Lee Williams notes that:
It would be most interesting to see what level of interest we can generate in this port, especially if that includes some major business partners willing to come in and invest in the development of a product solution, and one that enables some differentiators to come to market for consumers.
The Atom processors immediately brings to mind the netbook computer, but this could have much wider applications. Such hardware could be used in home appliance type devices (e.g. O2's Joggler device) or MID devices. These are areas with many different avenues, which could be a significant growth area in the next few years. You might also think about in-car computing systems (both entertainment systems and car management/control/sensing systems), set top boxes, personal media players and specialist industrial devices. Moreover there is every chance that new segments will emerge in the next few years as trends like the smart home, semantic web and Internet of things (and other principals underlying ubiquitous computing) gather pace.
In general Atom based hardware is more suited to devices with a PC like architecture that ARM based hardware. If you compare the OMAP 3 platform with a typical Atom based platform you'll generally find a difference in their I/O interfaces. Atom based hardware typically supports PCI and PCI expansion interfaces where as OMAP has more customised interfaces (e.g. for cameras). ARM based solutions tend to take a system on a chip approach (also package on package), whereas Atom based solutions have a separate chip called the System Controller Hub which links the Atom processor to other components.
Both hardware architectures have their own advantages and disadvantages, but what's important is that they offer device manufacturers choice and flexibility. This will an essential element if Symbian is to achieve it stated ambition of becoming the 'most widely used software platform on the planet'.
From a technical point of view it interesting to note that running on the Atom processor means Symbian running on the x86 architecture (as opposed to ARM). The Symbian OS has been able to run on the x86 architecture for some time. However no devices running on this platform were released to the market; it has been mainly used for test purposes.
Images and further details on the Symbian Foundation blog.
Update: Corrected / removed error on XScale (see comments).