Intel CFO Stacy Smith has dismissed tablets as being particularly magical development to the IT industry listing them alongside netbooks.
During last week’s earnings call Smith said that tablets were merely “an additive category of computing much like netbooks were an additive category.” Smith said that things like the iPad adds organic growth to the mobile computing market and they won’t negatively impact PC market growth.
He said that netbooks had a higher potential to cannibalize the laptop and they didn’t. He didn't see them cannibalising the PC market.
“I think people are using this for different kinds of reasons." He conceded that “we are in the early stages of tablets obviously” and noted that there is “just one really shipping in volume today.” There are about 30 different tablets based on the company’s Atom processors, even if none is really shipping.
If the tablet market takes off then Intel thinks it will do well out of it. The advantage of Intel in this segment is you can run a number of operating systems. “So we feel pretty good about our opportunity to participate in the growth as it happens.”
Google recently said that it still plans on getting at least one Android-based tablet out in the market by autumn, he said.
Just like netbooks
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