Intel drops Centrino from Atom brand

"Basically, we are simplifying and coalescing our efforts around 'Atom' as the single brand for Internet devices," said Nick Jacobs, a company spokesman in Singapore.

Centrino Atom was the brand name given to a chip package formerly codenamed Menlow, which includes an Atom processor and a single-chip chipset. The package was designed for small, handheld computers that Intel calls Mobile Internet Devices, or MIDs. But that segment of the market has been slow to take off, with only a trickle of devices hitting the market since Intel launched Centrino Atom at its Intel Developer Forum conference earlier this year.

The Centrino Atom brand was mildly confusing to some observers. Intel's Centrino brand is closely associated with laptops, but Atom-based laptops -- sometimes called netbooks -- were not allowed to use the Centrino Atom brand since these devices used a different version of the Atom processor and a traditional two-chip chipset.