Cheap Pentium M Deals Good For Buyers

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 19 July 2006

There could be a few good Pentium M notebooks floating around following news that big brand vendors have agreed to help Intel clear out some inventory that is about to become seriously out-of-date. Intel which is poised to introduce a new generation of processors (perhaps as early as next week) has asked major notebook makers to help it off-load about 4 million Sonoma (with Dothan Pentium M processors) notebook chipsets. According to this story in DigiTimes the chip giant, which will want the market to move to its latest and greatest Merom Core Duo processors, has asked notebook vendors, including Acer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP) to help clear the inventory. The big notebook makers have large orders of the Dothan processors on the way from Intel and plan to clear these by the end of the third quarter so they can concentrate on the Napa and Santa Rosa lines. Dothan processors (the Pentium M) are being phased out in favour of a new architecture that takes the best of the Pentium 4 and combines it with the low-power and mobility features of the Pentium M to create the Merom. The Napa line uses the Yonah processors which are the 65nm generation of Pentium M (Dothan), while the Santa Rosa platform uses the Merom processors with the new core. Acer was the first to kick off promotions of low-cost Sonoma notebooks, sources told DigiTimes. The Taiwan vendor is looking to push its dual-core notebook lines, which will all be based on the Napa and Merom platforms, after the third quarter of this year. Dell and HP, which have not moved to launch low-priced Sonoma notebooks in the market, are expected to soon follow suit, says the report. It's good and bad news for the vendors. While low-priced units push their unit sales higher it does little for revenues with average selling price (ASP) reductions pushing down margins. The sources said Acer's aggressive push of Sonoma notebook sales raised the company's shipments 30% sequentially in June, but its revenues only grew 15%. Which is fine if the demand holds up. Related news items HP Goes iPaq Mad -06/09/2007 With Half A Billion Cell Phones China Readies High Speed -24/08/2007 LG Goes After Quanta Again -05/07/2007 Acer To Introduce 5 Centrino Pro Notebooks -17/05/2007 BMW-Inspired Acer Aspire -03/05/2007 Newer news items LS3008 A Symbol OF Rugged Mobility -27/08/2006 Can Phone Vendors Maintain Growth? -23/08/2006 Acer Could Topple Toshiba -20/08/2006 AMD's $5.6 Million Deal To Take ATI -22/07/2006 Will 2006 Be a Billion Handset Year? -21/07/2006 Older news items Bun Fight Over AdWords Campaigns -17/07/2006 Symbol Toughens Data For Forklifts -10/07/2006 Mobile Phone Craze Boosts Silicon Sales -04/07/2006 Intel Sells Off XScale -27/06/2006 iPod Worker Exploiter Second Largest IT Company In World -26/06/2006 Tag This Now: