14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the obvious popularity of the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard, and how makers of motherboard chipsets and add-inboards are eager to provide hardware support in various forms, the laptop market is supposedly not in any rush to embrace it.
For those interested in a reminder, the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard has a theoretical maximum throughput of 5 Gbps, which is ten times faster than USB 2.0.
The main issue that has stalled the arrival of this interface to the mainstream is continued lack of native chipset support.
AMD will soon remedy this with its new batch of chipsets, though Intel seems to be less enthusiastic.
Regardless, according to a new report made by Digitimes, it seems that at least one side of the PC market has its reservations when it comes to advancing to the new type of USB.
The main factors said to be affecting USB 3.0 adoption on the laptop front are performance stability, market acceptance, the actual cost and other increased expenses from key components.
So far, NEC has mostly dominated the USB 3.0 controller chip market, since its merger with Renesas in 2009, and it charges US$4-5 for its processor.
This is because Taiwan-based makers have not yet been granted certification by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF).
As such, the main competition around USB 3.0 is held between makers of motherboards, such as Gigabyte and ASUS.
Granted, several makers of laptops, like HP, ASUS and Acer, released notebooks with USB 3.0 ports as early as the start of 2010.
Still, the proportion of such notebooks compared to the total is quite small, as only some higher-end models actually adopted the technology.
The main conclusion drawn is that it will take at least a whole year for a serious transition to USB 3.0 to actually be enacted on the market for mobile personal computers.