AMD recently announced that it intended to abstain from the lesser notebook market, likely because it is an intensely narrow-margin segment already dominated by Intel. More recently, AMD unveiled the fruits of their strategy in the form of the Athlon Neo which targets a market between the netbook and the expensive ultra-portable. Though Intel all but owns the netbook space, and sales have been more than generous, the world’s largest CPU firm isn’t making as much money as it would like. Given that AMD’s new segment would be a little more profitable, it comes as no surprise that Intel may be readying a ULV processor to encroach on this space.

Intel’s plan to introduce such chips may or may not have been a secret, but it’s not a particularly surprising one. The netbook and notebook markets are in a tremendous state of flux right now as companies both large and small attempt to identify the space between netbook and notebook, the features consumers want most, and what said buyers are willing to pay.