John, I think Microsoft has ratcheted up the OS prices paid by OEMs so that is is much closer to the price paid by the white box and SD shops.
In the past the major OEMs paid $25-30 for the OS, I understand they now pay 3 times that much.
In these days of smaller and smaller Hardware costs an equalization in the OS costs allows the SD shops and WB shops to compete more effectively with Dell, CPQ etc. In addition the supply chain to the SD shops and the WB makers has wrung out many of the tiers in there. Almost all suppliers of cases, power supplies, mobos etc now have USA shipping points in all major markets and they can ship FCC approved bare bones systems(case, mobo, and power supply) in truckloads from nearby tidewater. Usually memory, hard drives and CPU are bought spot as needed. Easy drive mirroring software makes installations very low in cost, labor wise.
Dell(?), CPQ(for sure) etc may well have higher costs than the SD/WB shops.
The availability of the FCC approved barebones kits allows the SD/WB maker to shift instantly to Athlon systems in case of shortages. The recent shortages of certain P-4 parts is a case in point.
Recent press releases indicate that AMD has gained more that Intel in proportion to their relative sizes over the quarter. Intel still is bigger and make more, but it looks like AMD has gained a small amount of share this quarter. This will be reduced to fact in a couple of months, so that jury still squabbles.
Bill |
