Posted on Monday, June 09 2008 @ 3:01 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Asus president Jerry Shen
estimates the market for low-cost notebooks and desktops is around 10 million units this year. Shen says 7 million of these systems will feature Intel's Atom and the other 3 million will be split between VIA's C7-M and the Intel Celerom M.
Since Asustek has achieved a strong performance with its Eee PC in the low-cost PC market, Intel has guaranteed a certain shipment volume to Asustek, according to Shen. So, although the company will still see an Atom shortage, it will not have be any major impact. Asustek is also planning to adopt Celeron M processors to ease any supply pressure it may have.
Since most low-cost PC vendors are using the same platform for their low-cost PCs, the key to winning in the low-cost PC market in the near-term will be which company can source the most Atom processors from the limited supply, noted Shen, while adding that the market will have completely rebounded from a battery shortage by July, so the major issue for the vendors will be CPUs.
