AMD Stops Manufacturing of Personal Internet Communicator

by Anton Shilov
11/13/2006 | 04:06 AM

Advanced Micro Devices has announced that it had stopped production of its Personal Internet Communicator (PIC) products, low-end personal computers for developing countries. The company blamed poor sales of the systems for the decision.

“Revenue from sales of PIC products has not been material and in the third quarter of 2006, we decided to stop manufacturing PIC products,” AMD’s most recent filing with security and exchange commission reads.

AMD introduced its PIC platform in late October, 2004, in a bid to address the emerging markets with very low-cost personal computers. In order to sell such systems, AMD needed to cooperate with governments or large businesses of targeted countries. But while the chipmaker has managed to ink several contracts, the PIC has not become really popular. ARS Technica web-site claims that Geode did enjoy brief success in countries such as Mexico, Brazil and China, where telecommunications companies sometimes leased the devices to subscribers.

In July this year AMD has shut down its Geode development center in Longmont, Colorado, without disclosing particular reasons for that. The aforementioned camp was also a part of Personal Connectivity Solutions group, which developed, among other Geode-powered devices, the Personal Internet Communicator platform.

It is obvious that AMD will continue to develop products under its 50x15 initiative, however, it is likely that the company will change its strategy to penetrate those markets. On the one hand, AMD takes part in one laptop per child (OLPC) program, under which it will supply processors for a notebook that will cost around $100. On the other hand, AMD’s recent acquisition of ATI Technologies is likely to allow the company to develop highly-integrated chips that can power very low-cost computing devices.