Intel Axing Celeron By 2011 In Favor Of Dual-Core Atom

Looks like the Taipei mutterings earlier this week of Intel canning their Celeron CPUs may be true, with DigiTimes reporting that the company has informed manufacturing partners that the low-cost processors will be phased out sometime in 2011.  The change will leave more room for the new dual-core Atom CPUs, such as the N550, which will arrive in Q3 2010 at similar prices to the current Celeron chips.

There are still a few Celeron launches left before the line sees its demise, with the Celeron P4600 ($86 in 1,000 tray quantities), T3500 ($80) and U3400 ($134) all expected to debut by the end of September.  In contrast, the dual-core N550 is expected to be priced at $86.  ASUS and Acer were both tipped as freezing new netbook launches until mid-August until Intel's plans for Celeron became clearer, as the old chip and the new Atoms have significant overlap in price and functionality.