AMD says consumers are technology illiterate

AMD has admitted that most customers don't know what they're buying when they purchase a computer and has today launched a new branding strategy which hopes to provide some more clarity for technically illiterate consumers.

The chipmaker said it will bin its various different labels that appear on its partners' laptop designs in favour of a simple three tiered system known as Vision.

Vision helps to make things clearer and simpler for customers by downplaying technical specifications. Instead, it divides AMD-based laptops into three distinct performance categories dubbed Vision, Vision Premium and Vision Ultimate.

Leslie Sobon, AMD's vice president of worldwide marketing, admitted that consumers don't care about what's inside their laptop. Instead, they just care about what it looks like and what it can do.

"We calculated that we had 221 different brands out there, but the consumer simply doesn't care about what's inside the box," admitted Sobon. "We need to stop talking about processors and start talking about usage."

The three tiers are categorised as See, Share and Create. Entry-level Vision laptops offer basic capabilities for playing music and videos and browsing the internet, while Vision Premium adds support for ATI Stream for video transcoding and DirectX 10.1 for casual gaming. Vision Ultimate adds extra power for video editing and more graphically-intensive games.

While AMD hopes Vision will provide some clarity for mainstream consumers, Sobon said that full technical specifications and information will also be available for those who want it.

Think it's a good idea? Let us know in the forums.