Re: "But if Intel does respond with prices that match those of AMD, and a price war is started in the mainstream desktop market, it would be very tough to convince me that Intel is the bad guy here.
This is a dumb argument. All you're doing is convincing me that that Athlon that Intel has managed to acquire has them running scared.
Fact is that AMD can't ship anywhere near enough K7 to do any damage to Intel in terms of market share, probably for the next nine months at least. Given that this is the case, AMD woud be stupid to charge any less for the K7 than they can realistically get for it. Starting a price war is the kind of thing you do when you want to gain market share, and AMD is in no position to take significant market share with the K7 for quite a while.
Re: "So if Intel were to reduce its prices to match those of AMD, dollar for dollar, clock for clock, then Intel would be initiating a price war because Intel is a leader, and they must give the competition some slack, right?"
If Intel did this they'd be undercutting AMD plain and simple, becase of the higher infrastructure costs for Slot A, the marketing kickbacks, and the value of the brand name, which Intel spends a lot of money to maintain. The entire reason you spend the money to invest in branding is EXACTLY so you can charge more for the same product than your competition does!!
Kevin |
