TWY,
re: "It's a cash incentive to NOT display AMD systems."
Now you are really getting paranoid.
In the real (non-AMD fantasy) world, a deal like that would have to be approved by the top executives at CC. And it would have to make very clear long term economic sense. Can you imagine CC executives saying "OK, AMD represents about 50% of our consumer demand. But we are getting a payoff from Intel and the OEM's. So we will limit our boxes to Intel, and our customers will be dissatisfied and go to other retailers, and we will lose sales and gross margin dollars. And we might not get those customers back. Sounds like a great deal."
It's just not the way it works. CC want's to keep it's customers by offering the products they want. Every inch of retail space represents a huge cost in employee salaries, land costs, electricity, insurance, corporate overhead, on and on. Every inch has to produce revenue and turns and profit. It's their business, and they run it like a business.
re: As I said, I think this is between Intel and the OEMs... not CC.
The decision makers are professsional buyers who know the industry as well as anyone on these threads. They rake the OEM's over the coals for the best deals, and then they make the final decisions on product mix. In the end, the only thing they care about is that the units provide profitable turns.
But, even assuming the OEM's had complete control over what was displayed at CC, why would they put in (as you presume)slower selling Intel units rather than faster selling AMD units? Where is the economic benefit?
John |
