Add Me To The Club Wondering About Intel’s Atom

Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOm and James Kendrick of jkOnTheRun have both picked up on a quote by Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini that has to leave you scratching your head. On a recent conference call he was apparently pressed by analysts about the ultimate end market for the Atom Chipset. His answer (quoted from GigaOm. the boldface is mine):

Otellini was excited about Atom, calling demand for the chip” robust,” but analysts pressed Otellini about Atom’s end market and whether the chip would cannibalize Intel’s low-end Celeron processor. The Celeron ranges from speeds of 2.13 GHz to 3.6 GHz, and is faster than Atom’s 1.8 GHz or 1.6 GHz. Otellini’s responses were less than a ringing endorsement of the chip. ““[Atom] is less than a third of the performance of our Centrino (high-end mobile processor),” said Otellini. ““You’re dealing with something that most of us wouldn’t use.”

Like Stacey and James, I’m wondering that if most of us aren’t going to be using this, how the heck is Intel expecting to be pull in a supposed $40 billion from Atom?

I’m just asking.