Notebook Makers Passing on Intel Oak Trail

The darling of this year's CES was Nvidia, with its Tegra 2 processor that is ready to set the smartphone and tablet world on fire. According to DigiTimes, notebook makers are impressed enough with the Tegra 2 to pass on Intel's Oak Trail processor. Oak Trail is the processor Intel planned on gaining acceptance by tablet makers, but the lack of devices using the processor at CES indicates OEMs have other plans. The DigiTime sources indicate Intel is already making price concessions to attract OEMs to Oak Trail:

Since Oak Trail has only been adopted by Fujitsu, Toshiba and Samsung Electronics for their tablet PCs and these vendors are not showing an aggressive attitude to mass produce models, while HP, which originally planned to launch an Oak Trail-based tablet PC, also stepped back and is reevaluating its plans, Intel is offering Oak Trail at a price point of around US$40, about the same as Nvidia's Tegra 2, and the company will even give a further discount for large volume orders, the sources noted.

The Nvidia processor appeared in a number of smartphones and tablets debuting at the CES, and indications are it is poised to give Intel a serious run in the mobile space. The Tegra 2 dual-core processor is onboard some of the top gadgets at CES, including the Motorola Atrix 4G and the XOOM tablet. The mobile space is the hot segment in the computing industry, and this is the first time in memory that Intel faces some serious competition.