Jim - RE: "The point was really from where AMD has come from, to get where they are, in one year."
Actually, the 37% retail share they had in January 2000 is LESS than it was in January 1999 when it was 43.9%! In February AMD had 51.6%, March 45.3%, April 45.9%, and then it went downhill because the earlier CXT problems finally began to hit AMD's presence in the retail market. I got last years numbers from one of the presentations AMD gave at the analyst conference in November. AMD got the numbers from PC Data.
Of course, the 46% in high end is practically infinitely better than previously, but we don't know if AMD can retain that mark, especially now that more higher MHz Cumines are hitting the shelves (Compaq PIII 733 was advertised by Best Buy this Sunday). Now, if Thunderbird is used by OEMs in retail PCs that 46% number might actually go up because it will more than likely be quite a bit faster than PIII at the same MHz and Ghz.
I think AMD's guidance when they come out with Q1 earnings will be very important. As far as I'm concerned, Thunderbird doesn't guarantee AMD's financial success by itself, they have to have win many more boxes to sell them in, hopefully business PCs...
And Spitfire needs to come out without any burps. As Chuck pointed out AMD will have a hole in what they offer until Spitfire comes out, but Spitfire is attached to Socket-A motherboards and we know what happened with Athlon m-boards last year. |
