Monday, March 17, 2003
The overall impact of Intel Corp.'s Centrino product line is expected to be minimal, despite the company's massive and costly marketing push for this technology, according to a report from WR Hambrecht + Co. LLC here this week.
This week, Intel rolled out its new Centrino mobile platform, which is based on a 32-bit processor that was originally called Banias. It also includes the 855 peripheral logic chipset, and the Intel Pro/wireless 2100 network connection, which are the chips to provide wireless LAN connectivity.
But WR Hambrecht believes that Intel has missed the mark with the product. "Expensive pricing of Intel's Centrino should slow Intel's WLAN penetration in 2003 as enterprise spending remains tepid," according to the report from the San Francisco-based investment banking firm.
The report indicates that Intel is charging an 83% premium for the 1.6-GHz Centrino over its own 2.2-GHz mobile version of the Pentium 4 processor. And Intel is also charging a 229% premium for the Centrino 802.11b chip set, which goes for $46 verses $14 in the merchant market, according to the report.
There is another problem. "802.11a/g is needed for embedded notebooks vs. Centrino which is 'b-only'. Notebook vendors may be reluctant to market this aggressively. However, Intel could push OEMs in this direction by dangling Centrino marketing dollars in front of them," the report said.
As a result, there is a "window of opportunity for Intel to grow in WLAN business along with other chipset players, in our opinion," the report added.
By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved
|
