Usages first
Warming to her theme, Sobon continued: "Let's change how we communicate. Our OEMs will start talking to consumers based on usages [as opposed to specs] first." To anyone questioning the need for AMD to change the way it communicates, Sobon had a simple but conclusive message. "Look at our market share," she said, and she didn't mean that in a good way.
It was telling to hear Sobon talking on behalf of AMD's OEM partners. One of the biggest criticisms we've had of AMD in the past year or two has been its relative failure to convert good technology into products on the shelves.
AMD had technology leadership in integrated graphics last year and launched the Puma notebook platform on the back of it, but OEMs reacted slowly and before long Intel launched Centrino 2. Towards the end of last year Sobon's colleague Pat Moorhead told us all about their new thin-and-light platform, codenamed Yukon, but so far we've only seen one product and at this year's Computex, Intel's competing CULV platform had a much higher profile.
The good news for AMD is that it's pretty well represented on the OEM side. Sobon came from Dell, Moorhead from Compaq and its European operations are dominated by people recently poached from HP. These people all know how to sell notebooks, and we're confident that their collective experience at OEMs had a strong influence in this marketing strategy.
Here's what a notebook with a Vision sticker on it promises to deliver.
