
AMD may be facing irrelevance - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/op-ed-amd-may-be-facing-irrelevance/
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stephengillie
Even after the merger, the company still basically makes 2 things:
Desktop/laptop CPUs, and desktop/laptop GPUs. While these processor types
_are_ merging, they aren't merging fast enough _in the desktop space_ to make
the merger's syngeries valuable anymore.

A better way to say it is that smartphone/tablet form factors are really
driving that merging, and the desktop/laptop space is just benefiting from it.
Yet AMD isn't near any real tablets - they aren't in any Windows tablets, and
they aren't making ARM CPUs.

The low-budget PC market really is being subsumed by tablets and smartphones -
checking email, fb, twitter, websites, getting directions, and most common
computing tasks are handled more easily by these low-power appliances than by
an underpowered stationary desktop PC.

Even nVidia has Tegra processors running many popular tablets, and nVidia
didn't even make general-purpose CPUs when AMD and ATI merged. Strangely
enough, nVidia may be doing better in the mobile space than Intel.

