ATI has made switchable graphics before Nvidia, but with its solution you needed to switch the GPU on and off manually. ATI’s Optimus should do the same as Nvidia’s Optimus, switch the discrete GPU off when it’s not needed, and it should do this automatically.
ATI potentially has a lot of market as it can offer such a solution to both ODMs who want AMD and Intel based notebooks, since AMD / ATI switchable graphics already work with Intel integrated chipsets.
We have heard that notebook manufactures expect to have ATI’s version of Optimus by the end of the year, but we don’t have any more accurate timeframe than that.