Dell is fighting for the entire PC industry to make the netbook term trademark-free. But why?
The same company that tried to trademark “cloud computing“, filed a petition this week with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the “netbook” trademark owned by Psion Teklogix!
Isn’t that funny?
Well, that mysterious Austin, Texas-based company is no other than Dell, the computer maker that is pushing hard its line of… yes, you guessed it… netbooks!
Dell claims that the term “netbook” has become generic and should be used by anyone without worrying about getting sued by the Canadian company.
The computer maker’s “real” intention are open to speculation though, as it could then apply for the netbook trademark after it has being declassified by the USPTO
The rise of Atom sales could spell trouble for Intel's margins
That’s rather a good news in this otherwise morose environment.
In an interview given to Reuters at the Mobile World Congress, the general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, Anand Chandrasekher, said it expects sales of the low-power Atom chip to grow 50 per cent in 2009, year-over-year.
Last quarter, Atom sales already jumped 50%, reaching $300 million. And for the same period, Intel’s total sales dropped 23% compare to the year before, at $8.2 billion.
This year, Intel’s Atom chip will find its way in smartphones as well as in MIDs (mobile Internet devices) and netbooks; analysts suggest this rapid growing category to double in size and reach 35 million units in 2009.
Intel wrongly dismisses ARM competition
In the same interview, Chandrasekher dismissed the ARM-based competition – from Freescale, Nvidia, Qualcomm or Texas Instruments – as being architecturally “fragmented”.
Not sure what the Intel exec tried to say, as the most innovative smartphones released so far are all based on ARM cores, including the Apple iPhone. And on the netbook front, ARM licensees are getting ready to ship sub-$200 (and sometimes less) laptops running Windows or Ubuntu Linux.
Freescale's netbook chip competes head-on with Intel's Atom chip. Photo: Or Hiltch (http://www.flickr.com/photos/orcaman)
At the Mobile World Congress conference, the chipmaker said its i.MX515 system on a chip (SOC) processor will support Google’s Android operating system by next quarter.
The Austin, TX-company sees $100 netbooks – with Wi-Fi connectivity – coming as early as this Summer.
Freescale anticipates that netbooks powered by ARM chips could capture as much as half of the world’s netbook chip market; estimated to reach 35 million units this year, according to research firm ABI.
Last month, at CES, Freescale unveiled the same ARM-based chip with support for Linux.
The i.MX515 processor is based on ARM’s Cortex-A8 core which supports 3D graphics and high-definition (1080p) video playback. Palm’s Pre, also announced last month at CES, is one of the first smartphones to use the Cortex-A8 core.
Nvidia said it expects netbooks to be available for sale this summer with its low-cost Ion graphics chipset.
Nvidia's Ion chipset should be available in netbooks this summer
Netbooks, low-end notebooks typically costing $500 or less, are the fastest growing category of personal computers – and Nvidia doesn’t want to be left out.
The company has been hit hard by the downturn and the soft PC market and badly needs new sources of growth.
Nvidia demonstrated Ion at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and says it is an ideal companion to Intel’s low-cost Atom computer processor – which helped spawn the netbook market. Some early reviewers agree that the performance is good.
On Wednesday, Nvidia will announce that Ion has been certified for use with Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
This should set the chip on course to be in the market this summer. Nvidia said it expects Ion machines to sell for as low as $299.
In a call with investors today, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer said that he sees the distinction between a netbook and a notebook eventually go away.
For AMD’s chief, new cheap ultra-thin and light graphically capable notebooks are going to be the next generation of netbooks or netbooks 2.0!
So, why pay more indeed for the current expensive (over $500) bulky, widescreen, battery hungry notebook? I wonder why the PC industry didn’t think about it sooner. Greed perhaps?
Here are some excerpts of his comments about netbooks:
“There will be a continuum of price points and form factors”
“Given the way netbooks are configured today, consumers who want a notebook at those kind of 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. And likewise people who wanted a thin and light machine had to pay a lot of money, typically well over a thousand dollars.”
“Upcoming inexpensive ultra-thin notebooks will meet the need for a small, thin, lightweight laptop that is more powerful than a netbook”
ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih with TechPulse 360 editor, Jean-Baptiste Su
At the ASUS press conference last night at CES, Chairman Jonney Shih confirmed to TechPulse 360 the release of the company’s upcoming Android smartphone – the eeePhone – next month, probably at the GSM World Congress show in Barcelona.
“It will be before Cebit,” added Shih.
ASUS is also looking at developing an ARM-based netbook that will enable the Taiwanese company to reach even lower price point than the current Atom-based netbooks.
When asked about the netbook trademark owned by UK-based Psion, Shih countered that “netbook” is now part of the common lingua franca. I guess he didn’t receive Psion’ lawyers papers
Although ASUS is an Android developer, Shih remains skeptical of using Google’s mobile operating system on a netbook/notebook.
Finally, the Taiwanese company points to its fairly good relationship with Intel that lets the PC maker quite free to use Intel’s Atom processor with competing graphics chips from Nvidia or ATI. “It’s been over 10 years that we told Intel about their graphics problem. That’s why we’re excited to work with them on Larabee [Intel's upcoming high-end graphics chip],” adds Shih.
ASUS’ N10 netbook integrates Intel’s Atom and the Nvidia GeForce 9300M graphics chip. On the higher-end of the spectrum, ASUS unveiled at the press conference a $1,649 S121 netbook running Windows 7 and with a 512 GB solid state drive.
Follows a video with some comments Shih made during the CES press conference:
For industry analyst Rob Enderle, 2008 saw the ramp of the iPhone and the emergence of the netbook as viable alternatives to the traditional PC.
While the smartphone growth did slow during the end of the year, largely because of the continued expensive service rates, netbooks peaked indicating the market is aggressively looking for a lower cost, more connected alternative to the traditional PC.
“2009, driven largely by the need to both be mobile and frugal will see an expansion of these thinner and less expensive communications and productivity platform products as more and more vendors being out ever more compelling products based on the Microsoft, Google, Apple, and even new Nova Palm platforms”, adds Enderle.
U.S. wireless carriers – like AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon – are slowing if not killing the adoption of smartphones like the iPhone or the G1 with their high data rates plans. Hopefully the sudden rise of netbooks will give these “Soviet Ministries” a run for their money!
VIA's Trinity high-definition netbook platform is a viable alternative to Nvidia's ION
Nvidia’s Atom platform ION might never see the day of light.
Taiwanese publication Digitimes reports today that in a letter to PC manufacturers, Intel reiterated that Atom processors are only available bundled with its antiquated graphics chips.
In retaliation, the Santa Clara, Calif. chip maker could stop supplying hardware vendors with Atom CPUs in case OEMs decide to use Atom with Nvidia’s graphics chips.
Intel’s move is bad for the consumer
This in effect would kill Nvidia’s plans to build a cheap Atom-based high performance netbook. Which will set us back to where we were a year ago and that is bad for the consumer.
Thankfully, there is an alternative. Nvidia told me last week that it is looking to bring its powerful graphics chips to VIA’s Trinity netbook platform which uses its Nano processor instead of Intel’s Atom.
Patrick Moorhead, AMD’s VP of Advanced Marketing, alerted us of this deal found at a Best Buy store in Austin, TX.
eMachines laptop price change: from $500 to $299 to $330
But what’s mind boggling is that Moorhead bought the same machine for $299 on November 15th! If you can’t believe it, click here for a copy of his receipt. The original price for the eMachines laptop was $500 on November 2nd.
I thought such price fluctuations were more typical of an erratic stock market than of the PC business. But obviously I was wrong!
And yes, Moorhead is the AMD exec who told us he doesn’t believe in Netbooks in a recent interview (see below).
Yukon is AMD's Netbook platform shipping in first half 2009
After ARM, it’s now AMD to unveil its Netbook strategy.
Next year, AMD will deliver the Yukon platform in the first quarter of 2009 that will built on top of AMD’s current processors but “tweaked” with a lower power implementation; at a sub 25 watts power envelope. That’s lower than just the processor used in AMD’s current mobile platform, Puma.
With Yukon, AMD also claims to solve the poor experience of netbooks, moving up in performance.
“Customers don’t want a compromise PC. We will deliver a low power solution at a lower price point but with the same PC experience,” said Randy Allen, AMD’s processors chief.
Yukon will first ship with a single core processor dubbed “Huron” and then receive the “Conesus” chip, a downscale of the company’s current 45-nm dual-core chip with only 1MB cache. Followed then in 2010 by “Geneva” and the 32-nm Ontario in 2011 that will also integrate a graphics chip.
Those netbook chips could come from “de-featuring” current mobile chips of their cache memory and frequency or from bad chips that are good enough for a netbook.
“Our netbook offering will start with a single core and then move up to dual core but I don’t think it will move beyond that in the foreseeable future,” adds Allen.
The netbook market is now getting pretty exciting with Intel, AMD, VIA and challenger ARM stepping up all their efforts.
AMD's future Netbooks chips include the 32-nm Ontario chip
Can anyone @IBM fix the WiFi network at #IOD11 ? It's been terrible for the past 2 days and everybody I talked just can't stand it anymore 6 months ago
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