Changing of the guard
At the start of this week I got a - perhaps much-needed - reminder that not everything in the tech world revolves around smartphones and tablets when I met with Leslie Sobon, AMD's VP of product marketing. AMD, of course, sold its handheld business to Qualcomm at the start of 2009, and has made it clear that tablets, let alone smartphones, are not a big priority for it.
This is actually quite sensible. Whatever we think of the value for money AMD shareholders got with the acquisition of ATI, AMD has to focus on fighting the battles it can win. We're headed for an almighty tussle between Intel and the ARM ecosystem in the mobile space and AMD, frankly, doesn't have the resources to join that fight.
Sobon pointed out that the massive PC market is still growing, in spite of the buzz around the mobile space, and with a small share of that market there's plenty of growth opportunity for AMD there. And, of course, notebooks are mobile devices too. There's no reason why a lot of the innovation going on in the mobile space shouldn't apply to notebooks too. Having said that, there are signs that the tablet market is eating into the notebook one.
Tuesday saw the start of Nokia World, which was given an extra piquancy by the appointment of a new CEO, and subsequent resignation of the smartphone boss, just days before the event commenced. The focus was on Symbian ^3 with the product launches, and Nokia insisted that Symbian is better than many commentators are saying.
But Symbian has a serious image problem, and any benefit of the doubt Nokia might be entitled to is undermined by its involvement in the MeeGo project. Put simply it's MeeGo, not Symbian, that Nokia expects to be the OS to take on the likes of Apple and Google, and everyone knows it. So why should developers develop, commentators comment-on or consumers consume a platform that is already viewed as obsolete by its only user?
