AMD Kills ATI Brand, Future Products to Feature Brand Change

I just wonder: what will the ATI fanboys do now? Join the AMD fanboy army, or ... ? It certainly is a time of chaos!

This had to happen eventually, and it did just happen: AMD has dissolved the ATI brand completely, and consolidated ATI brands, such as Radeon and FirePro under the AMD main brand. Under the new branding scheme, new graphics products AMD launches (such as the upcoming Radeon HD 6000 series), will do away with "ATI" completely from the logo, marketing material, and so on, and the market will, as it already has been doing since the AMD-ATI merger, albeit informally, refer to Radeon/FirePro products as "AMD Radeon" and "AMD FirePro".

AMD explains its move as an "evolution of the AMD brand portfolio", saying that consolidation of ATI-branded products under the main brand results in reduced marketing overhead. It claims to have surveyed several thousand discrete graphics-aware users in in the U.S., U.K., Germany, China, Japan, Brazil, and Russia. The survey revealed that when made aware of ATI-AMD merger, AMD preference triples; AMD brand is stronger than ATI (against graphics competitors); and that people see Radeon and FirePro product names more conspicuous than ATI, indicating a "permission" to consolidate ATI into AMD. The survey was conducted entirely by AMD.

The company also claimed that this is the perfect time AMD could possibly consolidate ATI brand, because Radeon products are experiencing good sales, and there's high market penetration of AMD's graphics products. Finally, AMD revealed the new brand logos that are nearly identical to the present ATI logos, of course, minus the revered "ATI".