Oh no! Netbooks are going away!
Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:01 pm
...says Amd CEO
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10148 ... 47-1_3-0-5
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10148 ... 47-1_3-0-5
And Intel only likes to mention the growth and popularity of netbooks in the past tense...Advanced Micro Devices' chief executive predicts that Netbooks will eventually disappear. This thinking, though obviously favorable to AMD's strategy, isn't completely at odds with Intel's.
"The distinction between what is a Netbook and what is a notebook is going to go away," AMD CEO Dirk Meyer said Thursday in the company's earnings conference call.
"There will be a continuum of price points and form factors," he said.
"Given the way Netbooks are configured today, consumers who want a notebook at those kind of (low) price points have to compromise and as a result don't enjoy a full PC experience, particularly around the graphics and media capability of the machine," Meyer said. "And likewise people who wanted a thin and light machine had to pay a lot of money, typically well over a thousand dollars."
Upcoming inexpensive ultra-thin notebooks will meet the need for a small, thin, lightweight laptop that is more powerful than a Netbook, Meyer said.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Intel and AMD will go kicking and screaming to the end before they acknowledge that people are finally wising up to the fact that for most computing tasks they don't need a dual or quad core power sucking CPU, and that it's much more enjoyable to carry around a 2-3 pound netbook/notebook with a 9-10 inch screen that costs $200-$400. The fact is that the future revenue growth and profit margins are going to be a fraction of what they used to be for INTC and AMD, and they just won't admit it. That's ok. VIA will be happy to step in with better Nanos if Intel decides to take it's Atom from the game and go home.This sentiment is actually backed up to some extent by Intel's recent behavior. Intel CEO Paul Otellini, in that company's earnings conference call last week, spoke oddly of Netbooks in the past tense. He said the buzz around Netbooks at the Consumer Electronics Show "validates our view that (the market) had a high potential for growth and it was an exciting segment, in particular in this kind of economic environment."