Intel: “Atom is off to a very, very rapid start..”

Intel Atom If there is one company that doesn’t need convincing that the Intel Atom CPU and the netbooks it’s being utilized in are going to be successful, it’s Intel.

Reuters / InformationWeek are reporting that sales of the low voltage, low-cost CPU are much better than Intel expected, with a bit of thanks to the economic issues that have popped up over the past six months (that would help drive a low-cast laptop). The biggest factor is obviously the explosion of mobile devices using the Atom.

Intel’s Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said that it’s hard for them to tell just where the demand for the Atom is going to end up, with Intel needing to wait and see for another six months or so (it sounds like to go through a complete cycle of products).

Smith also addressed what some companies have been worried about (hurting laptop sales):

“It seems to be growing the market rather than cannibalizing existing PC sales.”

Smith also said he was not unduly concerned about Atom cannibalizing sales of its existing Core chips, but allowed that he would not mind sales of Atom eating a bit into those of its low-cost Celeron processors.

“If it’s cannibalizing from the Celeron part of the market, I’ll take that any day,” Smith said.

Read: Reuters / InformationWeek