Intel Losing Atom CPU Customers

Intel may not have been advertising this, and we aren't surprised. It's not every day that a top company, in any industry, likes to say that it is using its two primary customers.

Intel isn't going to suffer overmuch on the CPU front, ever, although AMD recent activities may be posing higher challenges than usual, especially the incredible prices of the Trinity APUs, (provided they are real).

Some sides of its business may be put through the wringer though. In fact, the Atom CPU series may be the one in most danger at the moment.

It is said that the Santa Clara, California-based chip giant is thinking of revising its roadmap, due to recent events.

And by recent events we mean the decision on the part of ASUS and Acer to stop making products based on it.

Acer has made no plans to develop new netbook projects. This is not exactly a notice of total cessation of development, but it is the next best thing.

ASUS did one better and has already decided to halt Eee PC product line. It will keep selling the ones it has, but won't make any more, at least for a while.

Thus, handset and embedded system manufacturers will be the only ones with a use for Clover Trail, and the previous-generation Atom chips.

Tablet and regular notebooks are, once again, held responsible for the sharp decrease of consumer interest in netbooks and other Atom-powered products.

The only thing Intel can do at this point, if it actually wants to “reset” the interest level, is to adjust its roadmap and bring out the successor to the N and D series earlier than December 2013. As it stands, the Atom N2800 and N2600 processors for netbooks and Atom D2700, D2500 and D2550 processors for nettops are the main players right now, and their shipments will drop by half in Q4 2012.