Intel’s mobility future depends on ‘desirability’

At the Intel Technology Summit, Intel mentioned that future computers need to be not only affordable and capable, but most importantly desirable. And for that very reason, Intel is learning skills that are usually outside of its core semi-conductor business, like ultra-thin designs and efficient cooling that are usually conflicting goals. To you and us, that simply means: cooler gadgets, soon!

Intel also said that developed countries went from having one phone per house, to one per room, to one per person. The company thinks that this is will also happen for personal devices as well, and that the growth in mobile computers will somewhat mimic the mobile handset growth over the past 10 years. To help make this a reality, Intel is readying its next generation mobile chip code-named PineTrail and just confirmed that the chip be finished on time.

In our opinion, Intel is really in control of the situation here: the company could make Atom evolve faster than it does today, but its market lead is important enough to let Intel carefully balance its processor line up to avoid any significant cannibalization. According to a third party study (UBS), less than 10% of Netbook buyers claim to use their system as their primary computers. What about Nettops? Intel believes that the performance difference is sufficient to avoid cannibalization as well, and this is probably an accurate assessment.