In late May AMD officially launched its first Jaguar-based APUs. Kabini was supposed to end up in all sorts of products, from cheap and cheerful notebooks, to AIOs and traditional desktops.
Temash is an even more frugal version of the chip, so it was intended for ultraportables, hybrids and similar form factors. Both chips arrived with much fanfare and got a lot of praise from the tech press. They are the most interesting consumer products to come out of AMD in 2013.
However, it’s been exactly three months since the launch and there really aren’t that many actual products to buy. There are some Jaguar-based notebooks and desktops in EMEA and US, but even they are available in a handful of shops, in rather limited numbers. The Acer Aspire V5, HP Pavilion Sleekbook TouchSmart 11, Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite are Temash powered ultraportables and they are readily available in most European markets, albeit in a limited number of shops. So far they appear to be the only Temash notebooks in stock in Europe.
It is even worse with Kabini. There’s the Lenovo Thinkpad E145 in two SKUs, Toshiba Satellite C70/C75 and a huge Packard Bell 17-incher, which is practically the only Kabini notebook available on the continent, at least the only one to be found in price search engines. It’s only available in two Austrian shops, which is still better than the Lenovo and Toshiba, as nobody appears to have them in stock at the moment.
Then there’s a couple of Acer SFF desktops and a Packard Bell all-in-one, and that’s about it. There’s also not a single mini-ITX board yet, which is bad news for HTPC enthusiasts and tinkerers. It also may indicate that the first batches of Kabini chips are destined solely for OEMs, but we can only speculate.
In any case three months into the launch AMD’s most promising chip of the year is very hard to come by. This is very bad news for AMD. Kabini had the potential to wipe the floor with Intel’s obsolete 32nm Atoms and it should have enjoyed a few months on the market before Intel rolls out new 22nm Bay Trail parts. Now it seems this won’t be the case. The Bay Trail launch is just a few weeks away and it is becoming apparent that AMD failed to capitalize on its lead.
AMD informed us that is has product in stock in the US and EMEA. However, volumes and the number of actual design wins remain a concern. Jaguar is an excellent product with lots of potential, but with the PC market in shambles, it might struggle to gain traction and get plenty of design wins, as vendors and disties are still sitting on heaps of unsold Cedarview and Brazos products.
