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New AMD Processors Aiming Between Laptops and Netbooks
An anonymous reader writes with an article about AMD's Conesus chip, suggesting that it is intended to compete with Intel's Atom for the netbook market. However, CNet reports that AMD is eschewing that form factor in favor of something larger, yet still more portable than a traditional laptop. Quoting:
"AMD's strategy seems solid, in my opinion. Go for a segment that is bigger and better than Netbooks. The ultraportable category (the MacBook Air being the best example) is full of attractive but expensive designs. Why not work with PC makers to offer an ultrathin, ultralight, full-featured 13-inch notebook that is priced a lot less than $1,800? Why not $600 or $700? In addition to the conventional criticism of Netbooks (small screens, tiny keyboards), an underrated fact is that many users eventually get the feeling that they're stuck with an underpowered laptop."
Microsoft stroke deals with hardware vendors to limit capacities of their netbook products. Asus is trying to pull off this market and sell bigger (and a bit more expensive) products. Are they scared that too many people will learn that a netbook is enough for them ?
an underrated fact is that many users eventually get the feeling that they're stuck with an underpowered laptop
... games? Who knows... I think it's the same mentality that gets dual/quad CPUs in desktops that are used for spreadsheets and browsing. More power to AMD to sell their products - just as long as it comes with a screen resolution upgrade.
I have a new netbook with Intel's Atom chip in it (Lenovo Ideapad) and it isn't underpowered so much as just underfeatured. For the screen, it isn't the size but the resolution; Fujitsu manages to put 1280x800 in their even smaller Lifebook models but that doesn't explain the 6x cost difference. It'd be nice to have a firewire port (I have a FW video camera and external drives) and a DVI instead of analog VGA. Other than that, the thing is perfect so it's close enough. Some people will want more CPU power for
I'm actually inclined to agree with AMD's stance on this. Incidentally, I think this is the original article that all these other news sources are paraphrasing and it has more information.
You are undoubtedly right that now netbooks are available people who were previously stuck at full laptop level but only need a netbook will migrate. And we're seeing that. But not all the people who buy a netbook will find it suits them in the end. I was very tempted to get one, nearly did, but eventually decided that nice though the Eee PC looked, it ultimately wasn't quite powerful enough for my needs. The supposed advantages of netbooks / mininotebook are excellent portability, battery life and cheapness. But they're not actually that cheap - they're priced too high. Oh, they're cheaper than modern laptops, but UK£300 for an Asus Eee PC (about $US450, probably cheaper outside the UK), is still a significant purchase for most. Significant enough that spending an extra £150 / £200 for something obviously more powerful (and with more screen real estate), is less of a factor. For most people, the decision is more likely to be based on the portability (battery life is getting pretty good for full laptops these days and places to plug them in more commonplace, so less of a concern). Netbooks are more portable, but they're still not exactly mobile phones. And at the same time, laptops are getting lighter. A student who walks around with a netbook all day long might benefit from this, but a travelling salesman in his car, or a holidaying Slashdotter on the train... I think a lot of people prefer the power and the screen size of a laptop.
Netbooks seem to have done well because they are a new market segment and people who naturally fall to that segment are shifting from laptops or getting in for the first time now. Or because they're new and they're trendy. But what AMD are reporting is that actually sales compared to laptops are fairly small and there is also an uncommonly high level of returns on netbooks which suggests people realising they don't suit their needs either. We're also seeing a failure of the principle of the netbooks by their manufacturers as they implicitly concede that there is a demand for more power by releasing increasingly expensive and more powerful netbooks - a sign that they are trying to overlap more with the bottom end of the laptop market.
So netbooks - certainly have their market, but AMD might well be right to focus on real laptops where they may well take a strong lead over Intel. AMD have had their ups and downs, but most of those downs have been due to either not having as much money to throw around as the giant Intel, or sheer luck (Intel's Israeli lab unexpectedly turning up an unforecasted power boosting design). In terms of strategy, AMD have usually been pretty strong turning out, if not always the most powerful chips, usually the best price to performance ratios.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
High-powered, high-priced ultra mobiles have always been there - I bought a very expensive Toshiba back in 2002 which is pretty near as small and light as you can get given the screen and keyboard. Atom opened up a whole new market exactly because these ultra-mobiles are cheap enough to buy as alternatives, not replacements or to completely new markets which probably explains the higher returns. A lot of the statements in the article is plain old bullshit, like the "failure of the principle". It's like saying compact cars are a failure because people also want semi-compacts instead of full-sized cars. The laptop producers have been fighting heavily for margins but Intel has huge margins on the Atom, do a little die size math and you'll see that they sell for far more than Core 2 Duos/Quads in terms of $/mm^2. And the sales are so far beyond expectations that Intel, you know that semiprocessor production giant, had trouble delivering.
The alledged market AMD is claiming is there can be snuffed out by Intel at any time, they have the chips to do it but are keeping the prices on the high-powered ultra-mobile chips very high. The Core 2 Duo T-series will easily cost you 3x as much as desktop chips for clockspeed parity, for example at 2.5GHz you can get a 170$ E7200 or a 510$ T9300. Sure it would be very nice of AMD to come in and help push prices down, but Intel could slash the T9300 to 2-300$ in a heartbeat and essentially close any gap that might have been between netbooks and laptops.
Yes, for a certain range AMD still has good value products as that's where they have to be as challengers, but don't confuse market realities with how they're doing financially or technologically. However that range has been growing slim, with better chipsets to match the Atom they're fighting a losing battle on the lowest end, they have lost the high-end desktop and laptop market long ago and nehalem has a heavy dose of server-oriented improvements. Intel's been hitting all their high-margin strongholds and just delivering "value" desktop/laptop processors has very poor margins. Intel can keep up their tight tick-tocks and weather this recession, I'm not sure AMD can even with this restructuring.
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