A computing segment conceived by low-power CPU vendors such as VIA, that only got materialised with the participation of Intel with the Atom processor, the ULPC expects competition provided by the likes of VIA. According to news reports by a Chinese daily citing sources at VIA, the company's ULPC platforms have accounted for anywhere between 10 and 15 percent of ULPC shipments.

VIA, the third most popular x86 CPU producer specialises in low-power, low-cost CPUs to cater to the ULPC and UMPC segments. Its two main processor brands for this segment include C7 and Nano. With "low-power" being the selling point and Intel for a competitor, the major direction for CPU development would be performance per Watt while maintaining low thermal footprints. During its development in 2008, the VIA platform in general was able to reduce CPU size and power consumptions by up to 33 percent, which is further expected to drop by as much as 41% in 2009.