Looking Forward: Alternative X86 CPU vendors face uphill battle
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By Mark L. Van Name and Bill Catchings
At the recent PC Tech Forum, a panel of IS managers for large companies (all of which are PC Week Corporate Partners) was holding forth to an audience composed primarily of vendors. The topic was what those IS managers wanted from vendors, so the vendor audience was understandably very interested in the panel's comments.
During the Q&A session, one attendee asked the panelists whether they would consider buying PCs that used non-Intel X86 CPUs. Our attention began to wander, because we assumed we knew the answer: Sure, at the right price or with the right performance.
We were wrong.
All the panelists answered that, basically, no, they would not. Upon further questioning, they softened their answers somewhat. The most common change was that if a non-Intel X86 CPU were definitely compatible, comparable or better in performance than a corresponding Intel offering, and--most importantly--if such a chip were at the heart of a PC one of their trusted system providers were offering, then they would consider PCs using that chip.
It wasn't a pretty picture for AMD, Cyrix or Centaur.
We didn't get a chance to talk to the panelists after the show. So we're asking you: Would you buy PCs with non-Intel X86 CPUs? If not, why not? E-mail us your thoughts. If we get enough mail, we'll revisit the topic in a future column. In the meantime, we've reached some tentative conclusions. Let us know how close we've come to your thoughts.
FUD is almost certainly a factor. Intel's aggressive "Intel Inside" and Pentium campaigns have helped promote an image of safety that has to appeal to big-company buyers.
Once you couldn't get fired for buying IBM; now it seems the same is true of purchasing PCs with Intel CPUs. A more important consideration, however, is the desire most large organizations have for a solid business relationship with a major PC supplier, one in which the supplier works intimately with the purchaser at every stage of the life of the PCs. This level of relationship typically means the supplier has to be a large company. Because the largest PC vendors and middlemen historically have not offered PC product lines based on non-Intel CPUs, such PCs just have not appeared as purchase options to these large organizations.
This shortcoming also clearly indicates what non-Intel X86 vendors need to do to get their CPUs in front of volume buyers: Persuade large PC vendors to include those CPUs in their systems. This observation, of course, is nothing new and is something AMD and Cyrix have clearly wanted for a long time, but to date their successes have been extremely limited.
The key to changing all that is for these companies to price their CPUs dramatically below the Intel counterparts. This strategy would clearly be risky and tough on the bottom line in the short term, but what seems equally clear is that without a large price edge, these vendors just aren't likely to persuade major PC vendors to use their products.
Whatever AMD, Cyrix and Centaur do, success with large organizations will not come easily, so they might as well take the low-price path, one that all buyers appreciate.
Mark L. Van Name and Bill Catchings can be reached via the Internet at mark_van_name@zd.com and bill_catchings@zd.com. |
