Rumor: It's Curtains for Celeron (in 2011)

Posted 07/09/2010 at 8:15am | by Paul Lilly

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Is the Celeron brand coming to an end? It depends on who you ask. The talk from major notebook players is that they've been informed by Intel of its plans to gradually reduce the production of Celeron chips and replace them with Pentium and dual-core Atom N series processors. Following that, Intel will completely phase-out the Celeron line in 2011, Digitimes reports.

Sounds plausible, and it's doubtful too many folk would really miss the Celeron brand, which many have come to equate with poor performance, even though that's not always the case. Nevertheless, Intel is denying the rumors, but saying little else.

We'll have to just wait and see what happens. What we do know, however, is that Intel will launch its dual-core Atom N processor line in the third quarter of this year, and presumably at similar price points to existing Celeron chips. It would make sense, then, to at least consider pulling the rug from the Celeron brand to avoid confusion.

At least in the short term, Celeron will remain in the market. Come September, Intel will launch a handful of new Celeron chips, including the Celeron P4600, T3500, and U3400. After that, it could be curtains for Celeron.