2011 Netbook shipment will decline 18% YOY [DRAMeXchange]

[cbn]

Hmmm...so does this mean AMD is showing up to the party with Bobcat too late then?

If the market segment has already matured (peaked) and is now in the first stages of decline, I mean who wants to be the market leader in a no-growth market where the TAM is projected to just decline from here out?

(I say this with both Intel and AMD in mind, how do they make the argument for continuing to fund R&D in development of Atom and Bobcat if the market segment is evaporating?)

Have the Brazos reviews come out yet? Are we talking about the same thing here or is Brazos powerful enough that it would be considered for CULV laptop segment?

With respect to your question about Bobcat research & Development, the situation gets even more interesting when I start reading all the posts about Windows 8 being a Cloud based OS. (Apparently Microsoft itself even says developers should focus on web apps for the next Windows OS. Link here)

With Cloud, Bobcat's legacy x86 support would no longer be needed? This makes me wonder if AMD is considering signing an ARM CPU deal of some kind? (especially in light of ARM 64 bit, possibly on the market 2014-2015, which might try to target some of AMD's low power Bulldozer Server SKUs).

 

[frostedflakes]

Netbooks started before the proliferation of cheap CULV notebooks.

Now that there are cheap CULV notebooks, netbooks can be found pretty regularly for $250.

For sheer battery run time, netbooks are still king, even if by merely 10-20% run time.

Yeah I remember when netbooks came out you couldn't find ultraportables for less than like $1k. It was a pretty niche market and companies like Sony could get away with charging assrape prices for them. It was ridiculous because nobody really made small and cheap laptops that were adequate for browsing the web and other basic tasks like that, they were all pretty high performance machines that commanded an equally high price tag. And then ASUS came out with the EEE PC and really shook things up in the ultraportable market. Since I have a nice desktop for real work, I had always wanted a system like this. Netbooks filled that niche almost perfectly for me.

Of course for a while netbooks were the flavor of the month as well. Now iPads and tablets in general are the hot new gadget. So I doubt Brazos will change anything in the netbook market, sales will continue to be OK I'm sure, but they won't get back up to what they were because netbooks are no longer trendy and hip. It's all tablets now. I don't get the appeal personally, netbook is a better fit for me (for example, the lack of physical keyboard seems like a really huge downside to me for tablets).

 

[Arkadrel]

DRAMeXchange has an impressive forecasting accuracy in my experience, they nailed both the DRAM and NAND supply/demand cycles of late. This ain't your typical iSuppli or worse (TheINQ, shudders) type of forecasting or speculation.

These guys are tied in with the guys who know exactly how much capacity they are building right now to be able to support the market in the coming year, if the capacity is being built with expectation of an 18% YoY decline then you can count on there not being a 10% YoY increase because the factory capacity simply won't exist.

That aside, what I am trying to decipher from the tea leaves is what this means, or doesn't, for Intel and AMD in their respective Atom and Bobcat projects.

And I agree with the other folks commenting on netbook's value proposition (and lack thereof). When I went shopping for a netbook I opted instead to buy one of those cheap 15" DELL laptops for $500...seemed silly to spend $300 and only get myself ~1/5 the performance and 1/2 the LCD screen area. (but I did not need 10hr battery life, I admit)

It means intel is less likey spending alot of R&D on a better atom probably

and I totally agree about netbooks vs a real notebook with much higher performance ect. I wouldnt buy a netbook, if I had the option of forking out abit more for the real thing (a notebook). Tablets to me always seem like a gimmic thingy for certain jobs ect where in a work environment they could be helpfull, but hardly for anything daily use/common mans item.

 

[Hacp]

Who doesn't want a 400 dollar ultraportable that has 7 hours of battery life and has good performance? Are you going to play crysis on it? None of the high cost ultraportables could play any games(and they cost 1000+ dollars). AMD's cpu can at least play some games because it has a half decent GPU. Basically, if you like 15.6 or 14.1 inch bricks, you aren't the target of the netbook market. If you need a laptop for gaming, you aren't the target market. Netbooks are aimed at people who want cheap, light laptops with good battery life.

 

[nyker96]

I don't think it has a lot to do with Atom's poor performance as much as it has to do with the fact that tablets are the "flavor of the month" now. Everybody is coming out with them, and everybody's marketing machine has cranked up to convince the public that they just have to have a tablet PC. (Nevermind that they were soundly rejected by the public when they first came out about 5-7 years ago, when they didn't have the machine hawking them non-stop.)

yes this gent has the right take on this. Since the introduction of Kindle, Nook, iPad etc. Tablet market has took off like a rocket. Of course, the same pool of people seem to choose either tablet or a netbook for their need, thus you see a tablet hike in sales corresponding with a decrease in netbook sale.

Nothing wrong with Brazos, it's a great alternative to Atom+ION platform and does it at a lower price too. So I think it will sale very well in netbook market. In addition, AMD is rumored to make a variant that will compete in the tablet PC market. Of course like this poster said no one is exactly sure how far this tablet demand will grow or even if it's just a temporary fad or not. If it does proof to be permanent trend, you can bet not only AMD, Intel, probably ARM and several others will get into tablet market soon.

 

[CTho9305]

Hmmm...so does this mean AMD is showing up to the party with Bobcat too late then?

If the market segment has already matured (peaked) and is now in the first stages of decline, I mean who wants to be the market leader in a no-growth market where the TAM is projected to just decline from here out?

(I say this with both Intel and AMD in mind, how do they make the argument for continuing to fund R&D in development of Atom and Bobcat if the market segment is evaporating?)

Have the Brazos reviews come out yet? Are we talking about the same thing here or is Brazos powerful enough that it would be considered for CULV laptop segment?

To clarify, does tablet mean "fanless iPad-like thing" or "laptop with the screen glued down face up"?

I think netbook-like devices become much more interesting when you can 1) fullscreen YouTube and 2) not pay a monopoly markup for the CPU (and bundled chipset you just throw away to replace with Ion). I've seen StarCraft 2 running on an HP dm1z and it's not bad at all. Sure, the settings are on low, but when have you had a ($450) machine that can fire up SC2 as soon as you cross 10,000 feet leaving Los Angeles, and game until you cross 10,000 feet arriving in New York without a power outlet? Since 90% of full-size laptops are only 1366x768 anyway, you're not even sacrificing pixels with the dm1z, so you can still do work on it.

As for Atom, it sounds like Intel is squarely aimed at ARM and is working primarily on pushing power down (much moreso than pushing performance up), so it will be interesting to see if they can convince developers to port Angry Birds / Fruit Ninja / etc to make their tablet or phone products appealing.