AMD has decided that it will not bother with the low end tablet market and will give Android a wide berth. Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of global business units at AMD told InfoWorld that the company had no plans to port its Temash chip to run with Android. Instead it will be aimed at Win8 tablets priced around $499 or $599

She said that AMD is not interested in entering the low-cost tablet market and will rely on Windows 8 as it tries to find its bearings in the fast-growing tablet market. She admits Windows 8 is off to a slow start, but believes it will catch up in the future.  She sees a world where Windows 8 tablets appear in many different screen sizes and features.  AMD is interested in higher-end tablets that can run full applications and graphics, Su said.

This will put AMD under the bonnet of the more expensive kinds of tablets. Many popular low-cost tablets such as Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD, both of which are priced at $199, run on the Android OS. AMD at CES showed off a Windows 8 tablet with an upcoming tablet chip code-named Temash, which is the company's first tablet-specific chip.

The quad-core Temash chip will be able to run a full OS like Windows 8, while drawing less than five watts of power and providing 10 hours of battery life. AMD demonstrated a prototype 10.6-inch tablet made by Wistron that played full 1080p high-definition video. They will be in the shops in the first half of this year.

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