With a whole slew of tablets, ultrabooks and cheap mainstream laptops on the market right now, it’s not surprising that few are inclined to purchase a netbook. It becomes explicitly clear inIntel’s latest quarterly report.

Small and cheap, but that’s about it. The netbook’s best days are definitely behind it, when the market is flooded with tablets and cheap laptops as well as Intel’s latest initiative–the Ultrabook concept. Although the latter hardly counts in the ‘cheap’ category, it is certainly a more competent alternative, as it is equipped with considerably more powerful processors, fast SSDs and better performance overall for a reasonable price. Intel’s quarterly report shows that sales of the low-end Atom processor reaches a new record low.

Since the peak in sales two years ago, the revenue from Atom has more than halved and now amounts to only $167 million, from $438 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. The sales curve started to dip in 2010, and this trend has accelerated over the past year reaching ever new lows. On top of that, Intel has not made ​​any more extensive investments in the area, but contented themselves with relatively few launches with no major performance changes. This is it folks, the netbook is doomed.

Via xbitlabs

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