Slates Are Not Immediate Target, Says AMD.

Netbooks to be Targeted by AMD Ontario

[09/12/2010 10:11 AM]
by Anton Shilov

Leslie Sobon, a vice president of Advanced Micro Devices, said that the company had no immediate plans to target the market of slate-type computers. Earlier Ms. Sobon said hybrid chips that feature both x86 and graphics engines would revolutionize tablets.

"I think that we are looking upon tablets as we were looking upon netbooks. [...]with Ontario, we are in a good position to [...] grab a share of the netbook market. [...] We will move to tablets when they are proven successful. [...] Netbooks are not as sexy as tablets [...]," said Leslie Sobon, vice president of worldwide product marketing at AMD, in an interview with Inside Hardware web-site.

Back in August Advanced Micro Devices announced intentions to install its chips into slate-type personal computers going forward, but at the same time it said that it had no plans to develop direct competitors to system-on-chips (SoCs) based on designs developed by ARM holdings, such as those that power smartphones or the most popular tablet at present, the Apple iPad.

At present netbooks and similar low-power devices are much more popular than tablets. However, the recent success of Apple iPad is clearly demonstrating the fact that consumers do need slates.

Tags: AMD, Ontario, Fusion