There have been talks how new competition for Intel’s Atom platform would come from the ARM architecture. These machines will be even more energy efficient and even cheaper than Intel’s popular platform, but even if the netbook market has become a concept in its own it is not something the ARM companies wants to support. Now that Qualcomm has shown its Snapdragon processor platform for the public, targeting very small notebooks it intends to call the ARM and Linux based systems for smartbooks instead of netbooks.
The reason is that netbook, even if it is an acknowledged term, has been tainted by the early models that were very slow. Qualcomm wants to get a fresh start with the smartbook name and instead remind people of the powerful smartphones instead, whether this will be a successful PR coupe remains to be seen.
But the fact remains that many computer builders will be showing ARM-based netbooks/smartbooks at Computex, so the ARM architecture is certainly a force to reckon with.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform is available in several suits and the top model sports dual 1.5GHz processor cores capable of Full HD (1080p) playback and and supporting several wireless technologies like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and HSPA+. Beside Linux the ARM platform can also run the operating systems Windows Mobile and Android.
The Snapdragon chipset will be used by many different portable formats and Qualcomm claims that its smartbook solutions will sport battery times up to a whole day.
