AMD Transitions from ATI Brand to AMD for Future Graphics Products

A name may not mean much to you, but for the number two processor company Advanced Micro Devices (News - Alert) (AMD) it means a lot. Not having made much impact with the brand name ATI for its graphics processors and boards since the acquisition of ATI Technologies (News - Alert) in late 2006 for nearly $5.4 billion, AMD has decided to drop the ATI brand name from future graphics cards and chips.

The products themselves do not change, nor does the product performance and functionalities. But, going forward, all graphics processor chips and boards will carry the name AMD (News - Alert), including the upcoming Radeon and FirePro graphics products, said the manufacturer.

According to AMD spokesman Phil Hughes, AMD constantly strives to simplify the customer buying experience. To this end, we periodically evaluate the relative strengths of our brands. “Based on detailed research and customer input to focus our brand efforts, AMD is transitioning the ATI brand to AMD,” said Hughes (News - Alert). Consequently, the first products to carry the AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro brands will be launched later this year, while existing products will continue to maintain the ATI brand name.

The rebranding from ATI to AMD has been an option from Day 1 of AMD and ATI coming together as one company, noted Hughes. Based on market research and feedback from company partners, the following reasons prompted AMD to fully consolidate the company under the AMD brand:

--Primary market research commissioned by AMD clearly indicates that at this point “graphics aware” computer users know AMD and ATI are one company

--The results of the studies also indicate that replacing ATI with AMD will be beneficial as AMD is the stronger brand

--Associating AMD with the product and technology brands of Radeon, FirePro, Eyefinity and others has a net positive effect.

AMD said that the timing to rebrand the graphics products was right because there is a momentun for its products in the market, culminating in AMD recently taking overall leadership in discrete graphics market share. Market research shows that AMD captured 51.1 percent of the discrete graphics market while the rival NVIDIA (News - Alert) represented 44.5 percent of the market share.

Meanwhile, efforts are underway to deliver AMD Fusion family of Accelerated Processing Unit (APUs), which represents merger of AMD’s CPU and GPU graphics experise, for netbooks and other mobile device by early 2011.