Intel, who as you probably know develop the dominant Atom processor in the netbook scene, are apparently having doubts about the usefulness of netbooks. Stu Pann, vice president in the sales and marketing group at Intel, said some pretty revealing things at a recent conference. He firstly commented that Intel originally thought netbooks, with their compact and lightweight size, would be for emerging markets and younger kids, but it turns out most of their sales have been in North America and Europe, and not bought just by (or for) kids.

Pann’s most revealing and blunt comment was this: “If you’ve ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size–it’s fine for an hour. It’s not something you’re going to use day in and day out.” Well, he is talking for a lot of people there, but it just further casts doubts on Intel’s belief in the netbook genre. In short, Intel don’t buy into the concensus among many that netbooks could replace laptops and went out of their way to shoot it down. This comes after AMD chief Dirk Meyer said earlier this month that AMD is “ignoring the Netbook phenomenon” and marketing director Bahr Mahoney added, “There are a fair number of people that are not satisfied with the experience they’re getting on these mininotebook platforms.”

For netbook fans, the lack of faith by both Intel and AMD is a little disspiritng and casts doubt on whether this genre does in fact have a future, especially with many newer models becoming bigger — closer to traditional notebook size — such as the upcoming Acer Aspire One model that will be fairly bigger than its predecessor.