Goutama,
Thanks for continuing to provide the thread with the results of your DD. Lot of action this last 48 hours.
Anyways, I thought I would beat to death the Reuters story that you guys seem to have covered very well this weekend.
It says:
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Both speeds will be available starting on Monday with some limited quantities. The first PC makers to ship the 800 megahertz systems will be companies with the shortest manufacturing lead times, such as direct PC makers Dell Computer Corp. <DELL.O> and Gateway Inc. <GTW.N>
"Availability will increase as we go through Q1," said Michael Sullivan, a spokesman for Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel.
Dell of Round Rock, Texas, said it will be shipping systems with both processors, but it will ship very limited quantities on the 800 megahertz system, Dell's Dimension B Series.
"We are telling people it will arrive within 20 to 30 days, depending on component availability, " said Ted Druart, a spokesman for Dell. "The volume of components to put it together is still somewhat limited."
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I guess the key lines are "availability will improve as we go through Q1" and "it will arrive in 20 to 30 days" - not exactly a 99 release - is it?
We are basically talking about Intel using the tactics of old-AMD. The tactics that made AMD the second rate CPU vendor until Athlon came around.
Intel's pre-Athlon launches used to have about 2Mu in the channel before launch. AMD, on the other hand, used to ship a handful of units and announce product. Guess what? This time it is different! AMD was planning a 800MHz launch for January 2nd week with good supply and Intel decided it needs to pre-empt AMD even if there is almost no product on hand.
What I am hearing is that Intel with its more recent tweaks got CuMine800 bin-splits to high single-digits - somewhat below what AMD seems to be getting now at 900MHz.
The current sub-10% splits coupled with close to zero inventory of CuMine800s means Intel may not hit the typical pre-launch inventory number until sometime in Q2 (assumes a not too conservative 10-12Mu CuMine production number for Q1).
I think with this launch Barrett and Intel management have puts their egos before reason - something that people have typically expect from Sanders! It is an ill-thought out move in the sense that Intel is attacking AMD on MHz which is currently AMD's strong point - this is probably a gross strategic error.
Intel could have lost the MHz battle more discretely while continuing to deliver on every other aspect such as excelling on the delivery and customer service aspects. Now everything is in public - the public may not have the background to tell what is happening but every OEM with even an a little bit of smarts knows Intel is behind. But by deciding to go public with a launch they are clearly not set to do, Intel has set the stage for losing face in front of OEMs and popular press by not delivering as they used to and screwing up the operations side with potential yield losses.
I think it will take a blind man not to see through this crap but I am looking forward to see how many analysts can see through this vaporware BS.
Chuck
P.S.: There is a rumor running around that AMD may be making its own announcement soon - may be as early as Monday - don't know how much legs this on has. |
