3. Pentium-M In The Consumer Segment

What's good for the business user had better be inexpensive for the end consumers. In other words, home users will certainly welcome Centrino Mobile Technology in their personal notebooks. Consumers are, however, considerably more sensitive to the price than business users when it comes to purchasing hardware. The logical consequence of this is that the Pentium-M might also be found in consumer-level notebooks, but the migration will be quite a bit slower, due to the relatively high price of new technologies.

According to this, the full-size notebook segment should remain dominated by the tried-and-true Pentium 4-M technology, before it starts migrating in the direction of Centrino Mobile Technology (Pentium-M + Calexico + Odem/ Montana-GM) starting from the middle of the year. With the 'thin & light' devices, Intel sees a slow change from Pentium4-M to the Pentium-M platform, which should be complete by the middle of the year. With both types of devices, the Banias successor Dothan also appears on the horizon in Q4.

Notebooks of the mini, subs and slates class will be sent into the race with the ULV and LV variations of the Pentium-M starting from Q1 2003. Again, this strategy shows that the Pentium III-M is definitely a dying species.

With the value notebooks, the 'Mobile Celeron' can continue to exist at least until mid-year, to be replaced with (or complemented by) the 'Celeron' processor (because the "new" Celeron lost the prefix 'Mobile,' which might imply that we are talking about a "normal" desktop processor running at a lower voltage). But this is only conjecture.

Noteworthy is that with "transportables," Intel defines a whole new class of devices in the consumer segment. Here, Intel means notebooks that can be transported but that are not necessarily mobile. In other words, notebooks that have the latest technology in terms of performance but are primarily operated when plugged into the wall. This explains the unique name of the processor that will be meant specifically for this class of device: the "Mobile Pentium 4" could be a type of low-cost variation of the Pentium 4-M, with a reduced set of power saving technologies. But this is speculation as well.

What's been finalized in the business segment is also reflected in the consumer sector. The Pentium III-M is on its way out, and the Pentium 4-M is apparently being spared the boot until sometime in 2004.