And I care because of WHAT????
I'm an IT manager. I specify and buy PCs.
At the moment there is no reason, none whatsoever, for me to specify anything more than a 400Mhz PII for any of my people. Obviously, those are not available anymore, so I specify whatever's cheapest, to the extent we need to buy anything new.
So to me, the end customer, PCs are a commodity. I don't much care what's in them. Just about anything being made today does the job for 99% of the people who need them.
You guys are like racing afficianados, talking about the latest advances in Formula One engine technology. I'm a guy driving 30 mph in traffic on the freeway who will benefit only marginally from the latest advances and who will only want them if you can provide them for me at no extra cost.
Yes, I know this stuff matters in high end servers. But Intel's previous valuation was not based on being able to provide a relatively small number of processors for high end servers. It was based on being able to sell large numbers of high-margin products for every desktop ever sold.
Today, nobody cares to spend much for a desktop the lowest-end processors are more than adequate for most business users. That means the high volume (desktop and basic server) business is going to be increasingly low-margin. The high-margin (high end server) business will be low volume. And most importantly, the volumes for both are not growing very fast because the market is saturated and there's little reason for end customers, people like me, to upgrade.
That change is having, and will continue to have a major impact on Intel and AMD. I am not convinced that the management of EITHER company is up to the challenge, as it's going to mean a huge change in how the business is run.
mg |
