There is a huge battle brewing in the technology industry right now. Netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) are finally becoming the capable machines that science fiction always told us they would. Laptop grade processors are finally small and efficient enough to fit in devices like iPhones. At the same time, processor lines that have been traditionally designed for mobile phones are now able to run a full web browser and laptop computer experience. We are at a crossroads.

This intersection between the iPhone and the Eee PC will be the computing platform for the next five years, dominating market growth in the PC sector. But who will own this market?

All of the handheld/smartphone makers as well as PC vendors all have a shot. It is the Wild West right now, with everyone staking a claim.  No one is sure which operating system, hardware, or brands will prevail. One thing is certain however, there soon will be a blitz of advertising aimed at consumers which will confuse and alienate them.

That is why it is important for the players involved to establish their brand now. One doesn’t have to look but a few years back to see how this story will play out for all of the processor companies.

AMD, in the very late 90′s, was able to introduce a 64-bit chip that blew Intel’s best offering away (Intel invested in another technology which wasn’t accepted by the market at that time). They had a lead on Intel chips for the next few years but weren’t able to capitalize.Isn’t a superior technology everything in the computing game? Not in this case. Intel had established the strong ‘Intel Inside’ brand which had kept its processors selling over the period where they offered the undeniably inferior product. Consumers knew and recognized the Intel brand and trusted it to be the best. They understood that Intel meant quality, speed and sophistication no matter what the computer geeks in the magazines said.

A few years later, Intel’s processors’ speed caught back up to AMD and eventually surpassed them, especially in the quickly emerging portable processors market.

How does this relate to the upcoming ‘Netbook War’?

Intel’s netbook chip line,  Atom, is the only name in the game.  PC processors from VIA and, again, AMD are vying to get put in the next generation of devices but are unknown and untrusted by consumers.  Already Intel is dominating. HP moved their line from a perfectly adequate VIA chip to Intel’s Atom for no other strong reason than the name their customers expected.

But, as I said before, mobile phone processor makers are also entering this market. Next generation ARM processors from NVIDIA, TI, Qualcomm, Samsung and Marvell are all going to be put into the next round of netbooks hoping to capture the attention of consumers.

The only other brand that carries any consumer weight in this field is NVIDIA, who make video cards that are favorites among gamers.  TI make calculators. Samsung makes TVs. Marvell makes comics and Qualcomm is a stadium in Sand Diego.

The market is Intel and ‘the rest’.

Even if one of these competitors’ chip is superior, we’ve seen what a challenge it is to battle Intel’s brand. It isn’t hard to see history repeating itself.

The ephemeral pavilion, designed to move across continents and pop-up in the capitals of capitalism (cities with the highest Chanel handbag per capita), started its journey in the UK where it was built. It then was shipped to Hong Kong where, like a spacecraft, it landed on top of a building. Tokyo followed before appearing in New York’s Central Park. It is now off to Moscow, London and Paris.

Both the container and its contents exude very expensive and progressive sophistication. For example, the pavilion employed new materials and explored innovative construction techniques for each piece had to fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle to be transported in 55 sea containers. The interior is a carefully managed multi-sensorial exercise that includes a soundtrack-guided tour. The selection of artists is correct lacking something extraordinary with only a few truly remarkable pieces.

As a brand observer, I couldn’t help to see this initiative as a formidably subtle product placement done in a refined way that retorts to the overexploited but lucrative formula of art + commerce. In Chanel’s case this formula makes wonders, delivering Chanel’s brand story through a masterful combination of thought-provoking art, avant-garde architecture, cosmopolitanism and glamour. A perfect execution of cobranding that pushes the boundaries between commercial brands like Chanel and cultural brands like Zaha Hadid or Yoko Ono.

Chanel’s big aspiration to understand and shape the zeitgeist is admirable. But, inevitably it makes you wonder how one of the most radical and interesting brand initiatives of these days could quickly become an exercise of intellectual irrelevance? The answer is self-absorption. A mindset many brands are familiar with. In these dire times with the world’s worst food crisis since the 1970s, an economic meltdown of epic proportions and unemployment rates soaring in the US, austerity and frugality are rapidly pervading our thoughts and behaviour. One of its harshest critics, Nicolai Ouroussoff from the New York Times puts it bluntly in this paragraph: “Yet if devoting so much intellectual effort to such a dubious undertaking might have seemed indulgent a year ago, today it looks delusional”.

Ironically, this sentiment was also reflected in one of the art pieces exhibited – Yoko Ono’s wish-tree – where visitors would tie their petitions to a tree, a lot of which were condemning the lavishness of the event as an insensitive display of excess and conspicuous consumption. It was here where I had a laugh. My personal ‘contribution’ to the art world was a typographic reinterpretation of the brand’s iconic logo, the interlocked Cs. This is a refined version of my sketches:

The visit to this shrine lasted 40 minutes, and at the end of it I couldn’t help but think what a beautiful visual metaphor it was of the bubble most luxury and fashion brands live in.

Juan Pablo Ramirez, Juan Pablo Ramirez,