Rumors: 12-Inch IdeaPad S20 Netbook

The latest new netbook release rumored for the market is supposedly by Lenovo – an Atom N280-based IdeaPad S20 netbook with a 12-inch display. Lenovo, the makers of the IdeaPad S10, has seen massive successes in the netbook market in the past.

The news group making the announcement is DigiTimes, who accused Intel of trying to crowd out NVIDIA chipsets last year. Unfortunately DigiTimes doesn’t actually cite itssources for the prognosis, which raises a few problems.

Firstly, they say the new Lenovo netbook will be a 12-inch machine running the Atom N280. Intel, however, has specific restrictions on products with displays larger than 10-inches, and breaking the restriction would cause Lenovo to “lose out on preferential pricinig for the N280 processor.” With a $10 bump on typical quotes for the processor, Lenovo’s costs for the new netbook could grow by millions. This hardly seems logical or feasible!

However, DigiTimes addresses this by imagining that Lenovo wants to avoid the 10-inch netbook segment’s fierce competition.

The IdeaPad S20 would run a GN40 chipset and Windows XP, and cost around $586 (though its primary release country would probably not be the US).

We’ll have to wait to judge the veracity of the rumor, because the clues seem a bit fishy. However, a 12-inch Lenovo netbook would definitely be a welcome sight.

Via DigiTimes.