At a time when most of the companies have either entered the smartphone market or are trying to enter, suspense has been slowly building up why AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has not tried to cash in on the trend yet.
According to the AMD senior vice president Rick Bergmann, the true strengths of the company do not belong there (smartphone segment) and that they would not try to enter an already overcrowded market.
It appears to be a smart strategy for a company which never gained the top spot in the Processor market. In the smartphone segment, ARM has already taken a huge lead over other companies. To compete, AMD would either have to work with Intel or ARM, and none of these options seemed a good bet for AMD.
“We haven’t announced any plans to go in that handheld space. We’ve got plenty of opportunities…. in server, notebook and now tablets, that’s our immediate focus. But if the right circumstances come up and we can see a way to impact the market, we’ll obviously continue to look,” Bergman said.
AMD had launched the Z series processor in June for tablets, though it has not become a part of any major tablet yet. AMD will continue to watch the situation from the sidelines with interest and will make a move the moment they notice there is an opportunity.
The basic reason why AMD would succeed is the constraints faced by smartphones in terms of battery life, pixels or screen real estate, whereas AMD is strong in graphics — though it does see itself playing a bigger role in the tablet space where the user would love to see better videos.