Is Intel Killing 12-Inch Displays On Netbooks?

HangingChad writes "Dell has retired their 12-inch Intel Atom-powered netbooks, they said today. The official reason — 'It really boils down to this: for a lot of customers, 10-inch displays are the sweet spot for netbooksLarger notebooks require a little more horsepower to be really useful.' Or is the real reason that 12-inch displays on netbooks cut into Intel's more profitable dual-core market and Dell's profit margins on higher-end machines?"

Comments

intel varies the charge based on destination

[bogotronix]

I think Atom purchasers have to declare the destination of the chip and intel charges more if the destination is a 12" display. The idea being every 12" sold is a desktop CPU sale lost. AMD, NVIDIA, VIA don't have the necessary market share to impose this kind of restriction on the manufacturers using their chips. Dell is probably surrendering now rather than continue with a platform that's had its profit margins hobbled from the start.

Re:12" = normal machine

[jones_supa]

Exactly. And, there is already the term subnotebook for laptops of that size.

Re:Alternate Sources

[c_forq]

Sorry, I assumed Slashdot was using the same sources at the TechCrunch article I read earlier. You can read it at their site.