AMD CEO believes netbook name “will go away over time”

In an interview with Businessweek, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer has outlined his thoughts on netbooks and the company’s plans in this space. AMD is currently opening a development track aimed at lower-cost and lower-power consumption machines. However, when asked about the netbook name, he said that “I think the netbook name will go away over time”.

When pressed on this he replied, “Well, what’s a netbook? It’s a small notebook. But how small? Where’s the cutoff point between a notebook and a netbook? I think the line will continue to blur and people will just think of them both as computers.”

When asked why AMD has been so slow to embrace this segment, he replied, “Knowing that this trend toward lower power consumption and more mobility is going to happen, we just decided to load that into the R&D pipeline for later. It’s not a big volume target and not a big dollar opportunity.…”

“One of the saddest things about the PC industry right now is, since late last year, all anyone seems to want to ask about is netbooks. Good grief! It’s a low-cost limited-function device. There’s not much excitement or money in dollar volume there.” In our eyes it sounds he is a bit upset that AMD hasn’t been as active in one the few growing segments in computer hardware.