Intel's Sonoma Scene

Sonoma, Intel's mobile processor for its next- generation Centrino offering, is slated to ship early this year. Last month, Intel President and COO Paul Otellini told financial analysts that the Santa Clara, Calif., company had already seen 150 third-party OEM designs.

"Interestingly, about half of those designs are channel designs," Otellini said. "We are seeing very rapid acceleration in the channel and uptake in the channel."

Intel is touting Sonoma and its accompanying chipset, Alviso, as key breakthroughs in mobile performance and functionality--especially in areas such as digital media processing. The platform supports a faster 533MHz front-side bus and offers advances in USB connectivity. And unlike Intel's initial launch of its Centrino platform in 2003, when few whitebook designs from smaller system builders were available, the chip maker, design manufacturers and distributors have worked to develop base-level building blocks for the Sonoma rollout that can be used by the whitebook community.

The custom-system channel's embrace of Centrino and mobile platforms is noteworthy. Last year, Intel found itself scrapping several planned products and delaying others--all while its mobile processor sales through system builders and solution providers were among its steadiest businesses. And looking forward, near-term sales expectations for notebooks far outpace those for any other segment in high-tech, according to the CRN Monthly Solution Provider Survey.

Alienware, a Miami-based custom-system builder, is already working on next-generation Centrino systems and targets a series of existing Centrino systems at gamers and prosumers, as well as commercial markets. "Most of the innovative designs in the next generation are being driven by the channel," said Brian Joyce, Alienware's director of marketing.

Privately, Intel executives said last year that they expect growth in notebooks produced by system builders to greatly outpace the rest of the market. And, in fact, whitebooks emerged last year on the CRN monthly survey as strong contenders when solution providers were asked to name their best-selling notebook brands.

Robert Venero, CEO of Future Tech Enterprises, a Holtsville, N.Y.-based solution provider, acknowledged the growing competitiveness of custom notebooks and said he believes many solution providers are opting for the these systems because of price and margin issues.

"It's very, very, very competitive right now," said Venero, whose company used to build its own custom notebooks. "It's granted I'm not going to make money on the hardware, I'm going to make it on the services."