Both DigiTimes and The Inquirer are reporting on potential shortages affecting Intel Atom CPU production. The Atom is a low-power CPU favored for some of the smaller sub-notebooks such as the MSI Wind PC as well as upcoming offerings from Acer, Dell, and Gigabyte.
It’s a major issue – they are talking about 40% of the orders for Intel over the next month or so. Intel said that they are ramping up production of 45nm CPUs and they should be able to meet future demand and orders.
This shortage favors the HP 2133 Mini-Note as well as the Asus Eee PC, both of which are currently available and based on VIA CPUs.
In a side-note, DigiTimes is reporting that companies producing netbooks/ultraportable laptops are having to compete with companies making digital photo frames over the 7-inch and 8.9-inch displays used in many of these devices.