AMD Netbooks Finally Coming?

AMD may not be as famous as Intel, but it can certainly make powerful CPUs. It has gone back and forth with Intel and has grabbed itself a decent market-share. But when it comes to netbooks, AMD has decided to stay away due to low profit margins. AMD simply doesn’t have the resources of Intel, which means it has to pick and choose which markets it enters to and how it positions its products more carefully. This could all change with Acer bringing its AMD netbook to the market. Gateway LT3103u netbook which uses AMD Athlon 64 L110 processor is the first AMD netbook, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Many experts are surprised by AMD CPUs being introduced to the netbook market, but AMD has the technology, and it was just the matter of time. Even though AMD argues that it is only interested in the upper end of netbook market, as long as AMD comes up with low voltage CPUs, there are going to be people interested in the technology. AMD doesn’t care where its CPUs are used. At least not at this point of time anyway. But if you are hoping for AMD to come up with a netbook-exclusive CPU, you are out of luck.

Netbooks are more about portability and energy efficiency than speed. Even ATOM N280 is not that fast of a CPU. But it’s not an energy hog, so you can get crazy long hours with your battery. I doubt people care too much about what’s used in their netbooks as long as they can rely on their device to produce and consume content for/on the Internet. Who knows. Depending on its success in the netbook market, AMD might change its approach to this market.