"AMD is being anything but conservative. It seems they are betting it all, and if they win, it will likely be big. If they miss, the losses will continue to deepen."
AMD stopped talking about building a Fab 35, and are planning on converting Fab 25 to flash, leaving Fab 30 alone to produce CPU's. I think they have pulled back into a more conservative approach than where they were 12 months ago.
I think putting the whole company's future on the line with Hammer may be agressive, just like they did with the Athlon. But it may be necessary to remain competitive with a company of Intel's size. I still think AMD is in a much better position than they were two years ago, despite the current situation.
I think the price war may have hurt Intel more than AMD. I know AMD showed a loss and Intel did't, but how much in profits did Intel leave on the table to take back the 1% or less market share they appear to have claimed? I would think Intel shareholders would be more concerned with that than whether AMD showed a profit or not. Is $106 million in profit enough considering their market cap and $6.5 billion in revenue? As an AMD shareholder I am disappointed with the current loss, but I think it will be easier for AMD to return to the profits they had in 2000, than for Intel.
I am not an advocate of price fixing, but when an airline drops their fares to increase market share, the other airlines follow suit. It's only when additional passengers make trips when they wouldn't have otherwise made that make any difference.
If Intel needed the price drops in order to entice consumers to purchase PC's, then the hit to the bottom line was a necessary casualty. If it was only to hurt AMD, I think they inflicted more damage to themselves.
CB |
