The rumour mill has spewed out an interesting story, which if true, might spell quite a bit of trouble for quite a few netbook vendors. Intel is apparently planning to stop shipments of Z-series Atoms, and will stop taking orders soon. We first heard of this about a month ago, but couldn't confirm it. However, Digitimes has also ran a similar story this morning, so here it is.

Intel obviously wants vendors to migrate to upcoming Pine Trail CPUs, and Z-series Atoms were never meant for netbooks anyway. In spite of that, quite a few vendors, including Acer, MSI, Dell and Asus used them in their netbook designs. The decision will affect all of them, especially Dell, MSI, and to some extent, Acer.

Sources claim MSI will be forced to EOL its hybrid storage Wind U115, and the 13.4-inch X320 thin and light MacBook Air lookalike. The U115 is the crowning jewel in MSI's Wind netbook series. It offers unbeatable battery life thanks to hybrid storage, some clever power saving features, and most importantly, Intel's power efficient Z530 CPU and US15W chipset. The X320 on the other hand, is the cheapest X-Slim series notebook, and it's based on the same platform.

Recently, however, MSI and Acer have released CULV-based version of the their 13.4 and 11.6-inch products, so they aren't going anywhere. Dell's Mini 10 series is also based on Z520 and Z530 parts, as well as a few Asus Eee PC SKUs.

Neither the vendors nor Intel are officially commenting the rumours.

More here.