One notebook per person, predicts Intel

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Our addiction to the internet will drive us to each have our very own personal computers to carry with us wherever we go, according to one Intel executive.

The mobility revolution is already in the works, according to Intel's general manager of mobile platforms Mooly Eden, speaking today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

“We are addicted to the internet, we are going to be connected to the internet 24/7,” he said.

Just as phones went from one per house, to one per room, to one per person, Eden predicted we’d all soon have our own notebooks. “You do not want to share your phone with anybody else,” he said, admitting the device of choice may be a smartphone, netbook or a laptop – or a combination of a few.

“There will be more than one device per person,” Eden said. “People don’t want Swiss Army devices.”

The gap between those with their own computer and those without isn't because of price, Eden claimed. "It’s not an issue of affordabilty. A lot of people can afford it... do they desire to have it?" he said.

Eden showed a graph highlighting that fewer than a billion people had mobile PCs – the same number of people who had mobile phones in 1999. Now, that market has expanded to more than five billion. “Collectively for our industry… the opportunity for growth is huge,” he said.

Performance remains relevant

Eden stressed that performance must continue to improve to keep people’s interest. “The application you run five years from now will not play on today’s processor,” he claimed, adding that tools like automatic translation and data mining will require more performance in order to be carried out on the fly.

“Our competitors say it’s not about performance, it’s just about graphics,” Eden said. “But of course they would say that.”

Click here for more news from the Intel Developer Forum 2009.

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