While Mac addicts have Steve Jobs and a new iPhone to look forward to at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco on June 9, Personal computer fans can salivate over hundreds of new products to be unveiled at Computex in Taiwan next week.
“Computex is kind of the world’s number-one hardware geek fest,” Sean Maloney, Intel executive vice president, told me before flying off for his opening keynote speech at the show.
Intel’s low-power Atom microprocessor is expected to feature in dozens of new small-format notebooks, known as netbooks, at the show.
The category has developed quite a buzz. Michael Dell was spotted this week toting a new Dell netbook that could turn up at Computex and excitement increased when photos of a new Acer netbook appeared on the web.
Asustek, which started the craze with its best-selling eee netbook, is expected to show an updated version with Atom inside.
Jerry Shen, Asustek chief executive, told the FT last month he expected a severe shortage of Atom processors due to the level of demand from netbook makers following Asustek’s lead.
Mr Maloney admitted Intel had received more orders than expected for Atom:
“We’re ramping it strongly and are still catching up with the demand,” he stated.
“In the next six to eight weeks, it’s still going to be [in] pretty short [supply], but I don’t expect that to last long.”
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