Netbook popularity dips, brings down Intel’s Atom with it

As prices of tablets drop, the interest and novelty of netbooks also gets affected. Netbooks were introduced as cheaper, more portable versions of mainstream notebooks but with great battery life. All of this was promised for a very meagre price. Netbooks were expected to be as cheap as Rs. 14,000 when they first appeared in markets in 2008, but in reality, they were much more expensive due to a number of reasons - shortage of screens and demand, etc. Things have settled and finding a netbook for even Rs. 11,000 isn’t very uncommon these days. The product that did it was Intel’s low-power Atom processor and the glory days might just be over. X-bit Labs has reported that revenues from the processors have started dipping. Revenues took a hit of a massive 24 percent over the last quarter. 

Success story ends soon...

These changes happen as customers prefer to buy tablets over netbooks, which means sales of net tops and netbooks all over the world are quickly diminishing. Intel realizes that and the effort will now be aimed towards processors made for tablets. This means tweaking the Atom processor to be better suited for those kinds of products, which also include smartphones.