AMD Has Low Expectations from Ultrabooks

Many on the PC industry have been lauding the ultrabook initiative, but AMD is among those who don't really expect these laptops to prove very formidable, not with the MacBook Air around.

The main trait that companies expect to push ultrabooks forward are the thin and lightweight design.

Unfortunately, even though the laptops were invented as a foil to the tablet segment, it is very likely, if not certain, that they will come into conflict with a certain other product.

Said product is the Apple MacBook Air ultrathin, which more or less dominates the segment of expensive laptops.

The fact that this item uses the same Core i-Series Sandy Bridge CPUs, same as ultrabooks, definitely doesn't help the latter's case.

“We have been on the market with our ultra-thin strategy for some time. We have always believed there was a sweet spot in the market: the extreme sort of portability with beautiful aesthetic and very thin designs,” said John Taylor, the director of client product marketing and software at AMD, in a brief interview with X-bit labs.

“We have Llano silicon solution today that delivers as good or better battery life than Intel and better all around visual experience. […] The Brazos platform [for low-cost systems] has been a runaway success for AMD.”

AMD thinks inexpensive ultra-thin and multimedia-ready mainstream notebooks have better odds, especially since the Windows 8 features bound to become part of the ultrabook offer will be present and accounted for on all other PCs as well.

"We have to wait and see when the actual thing comes to market and when Windows 8 comes to market and how does the final product [ultrabook hardware and Windows 8 software] look like as a $1000/€1000 type device,” Taylor said.

“Windows 8 brings a number of capabilities that Intel would seem to be collecting under the banner of ultrabook. As well, there are a few things that they are doing with higher-end components that they are looking at that enable faster wake and sleep and this type of capabilities [in Windows 8].”