Santa Clara-based Intel said last Wednesday that it will stop using Centrino to refer to personal computers beginning next year. Instead, it will use the brand to refer to WiFi- and WiMAX-based wireless products. It would phase out sub-categories of its Core brand, such as "Core 2 Duo.
According to T.R. Madan Mohan, managing partner, Browne & Mohan, the chip major was devising strategies to rationalize the brand portfolio and its spend on core brands.
It plans to consolidate Atom (notebooks and mobile), Celeron, Pentium (for desktop and laptops) and Core (for high end computers) brands respectively. However keeping in mind the brand recall of Centrino, it would continue to use this only for WiFi and handhelds. From marketing perspective what Intel is doing is extension of well known desktop brand to handhelds, rationalise the overall ad spend for the desktop/laptop markets so that $300 million ad budgets support product penetration and sales.
Bill Calder, spokesperson for Intel in a blog said that the company currently has a complex structure with too many platform brands, product names, and product brands, "and we've made things confusing for consumers and IT buyers. Today the Intel Core brand has a mind boggling array of derivatives (such as Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad, etc). Over time those will go away and in its place will be a simplified family of Core processors."
And despite this, Mohan said that the strategy does not indicate a shift to other platforms. "Atom, Celeron would continue to be pushed more with new OS (especially windows 7) and Core would be the performance play. While it is true on the mobile device front, Atom is not a paradigm shifter, and the sales of notebooks by HP, Dell, Sony and Benq have not picked up because of low customer acceptance, given the marketing and alliances Intel can influence one would see more Atom based products pushed into the market. Its alliances with Microsoft, HP and Sony would ensure flood of products to counter AMD soon."
