14 DAY TRIAL // According to some recent statements made in the media by both Intel's and AMD's chief executive officers, the new netbook PC category, which has considerably impacted the market in 2008, is going to go through some changes in the near future, in the sense that netbooks are not going to be all that distinct from fully-fledged notebooks. This will likely favor the Sunnyvale, California-based chip maker, which hasn't delivered any distinctive product, specifically designed to meet the requirements of the popular netbook category. Intel on the other hand is also making plans for the future, where netbooks aren't going to be regarded as a separate computer category.
According to AMD's CEO, Mr. Dirk Meyer, netbooks, as a separate PC category, will eventually disappear, which will likely favor the chip maker. “The distinction between what is a Netbook and what is a notebook is going to go away,” Mr. Dirk Meyer said last week, in a company's earnings conference. He also added that a series of various form factors and different price ranges are to be expected.
“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.”
Just recently, AMD has released a new processor platform, dubbed AMD Neo, designed for ultra-thin and low-cost notebook systems, which are likely to compete with netbook systems, meeting the need for small, thin and lightweight laptops, but offering an enhanced performance ratio. The company's platform has already been featured in one of HP's latest portable computer systems, the Pavilion dv2 laptop, which won Laptop Magazine's Best Laptop Award at CES.
On the other end, Intel is apparently sharing AMD's view on the future of small-sized, low-power computer systems, as the company's CEO, Mr. Paul Otellini, said last week that buzz around netbooks at CES confirmed “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.” This would suggest that the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker sees netbooks as a product that has already lived its usefulness. However, Mr. Otellini later added that Intel “would do very well in the Netbook market in the course of the next couple of years.”
Whether netbooks are going to evolve into a different PC category or remain separate from fully-fledged notebooks is yet to be seen, but the fact that still stands is that netbooks have provided an affordable alternative on the PC market.