Asus, Acer Push New Netbooks Into 2010
The pause makes sense given the differences between the current Atom platform and its successor. Pinetrail will sport an SoC (System-on-a-Chip) flavor of Atom (codenamed Pine View) that will integrate both a graphics core and a single-channel memory controller. This iteration of Atom will remain on 45nm technology, but Intel has promised that the on-die integrations will help lower total netbook power consumption.
A dearth of new products doesn't correlate to a drop in demand for the existing ones, particularly in Acer's case. Those leaky "industry sources" have indicated to DigiTimes that Acer may see sales spike 20-30 percent in the third quarter, thanks to significantly improved European demand. Such a surge wouldn't be a sure sign of economic recovery, but it would at least indicate that the global markets are moving in the right direction.