According to the IDC, the astronomic growth of the Atom processor – which powers the vast majority of netbooks – has finally come to a halt. Atom processor shipments declined slightly as a percentage of Intel’s total mobile processor shipments for the first quarter of 2010.
“Atom in Netbooks is plateauing,” Shane Rau, an analyst at IDC, said in a phone interview. “With the market recovery, I think end users are going to be looking for more value than just low-cost devices. This is an opportunity for higher-end mobile PCs, for example, that have better performance, bigger screens, bigger hard drives,” he said.
I don’t agree with Shane’s analysis of the situation. I don’t think this is an opportunity of high-end mobile PCs so much as it is an opportunity for mid-range thin-and-lights. In any case, it looks like that netbooks are starting to settle down with a market share of 20% of the total mobile market.
It will be interesting, however, to see if Atom’s reduction in the share of Intel’s shipments is the result of a reduction in Atom shipments or an increase in processor shipments overall. The IDC so far has not been clear on this point, and it is obviously a big deal. There is some reason to think this is the case because overall PC shipments for Q1 of 2010 were up and because Intel has been selling Arrandale processors as quickly as they can make them.
The full IDC report is supposed to be out by the end of the week, so hopefully it will clear up the matter.
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