Centrino Atom No More
Continuing Intel’s recent stance that it’s UMPC and Laptop chip lines are utterly and totally separate, Intel has removed the Centrino Atom branding convention (formerly known as Menlow) after five months on the market, calling the small, power-saving processors simply Atom chips from now on.
Nick Jacobs, an Intel flak in Singapore, said the following:
Basically, we are simplifying and coalescing our efforts around ‘Atom’ as the single brand for Internet devices.
Menlow, aka Centrino Atom, aka Atom was originally intended to be used in Intel’s Mobile Internet Devices, or MIDs, but thus far the market and third party vendors have been slow to pick up on the product type. Instead, the chips have been used primarily in Netbooks or UMPCs, which tend to look like miniature laptops. This caused Intel to fear people confusing Centrino Atom devices with full size Centrino notebook computers, made all the worse by the fact that Intel had previously been installing Celeron chips in both notebooks and netbooks and that dual core Atom chips are soon to roll out, further blurring the lines. As brand differentiation becomes more and more important in a highly competitive market, Intel could no longer afford a perceived overlap.
Devices will now be branded with stickers that say Atom, instead of Centrino Atom.
(Source - Infoworld)
































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