Is the PC industry ignoring its biggest market? AMD seems to think so. "You see people chasing the glory of the fruit company Apple and trying to go after that premium experience," says AMD's Kevin Lensing, senior director of AMD client products. "You also see people chasing really, really low cost PCs with Android... I don't believe that we as an industry have been serving the meat of the market with the right product." Therein lies the supposed opportunity.
The so-called "mainstream user," which AMD defines as the guy or gal spending between $400 and $700 on a laptop is, apparently, gloriously underserved. Just how they're being underserved is the key to understanding what AMD is trying to do with Carrizo, the latest and greatest version of its laptop-focused APU architecture that puts the entire system—northbridge, southbridge, GPU... you name it, it's there—onto a single piece of silicon.
Now, you could argue that the mainstream laptop segment—which AMD says is made up of 63 million users—is being served just fine. There are plenty of great Intel Core i3, and even Core i5 laptops out there in that price range, and they do a pretty good job of serving most users needs: running Microsoft Office, streaming video, maybe even doing a little lightweight photo editing. AMD thinks the industry can do much better. The company is pitching Carrizo, or specifically the laptop it inhabits, as a "versatile hub."
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