"are these numbers what AMD sold to distributors"
As AMD has repeatedly stated, these are chips that are sold and don't have the right of return. Chips to distributors are not counted until the distributor sells them because distributors have the right of return. Sales to OEMs are counted because they cannot return them. An example here is when Gateway went all Intel, they dumped a bunch of trays of AthlonMP chips. The conclusion is that Gateway was right on the verge of offering an AMD server when Intel made them an offer they couldn't refuse...
I believe this is the same definition that Intel uses for sales.
"If you believe the rumors about AMD stuffing the channel with ultra low cost CPUs (there were several reports of this, IIRC)"
Give me a mechanism by which AMD or Intel can stuff channels with the above rules. Sure, you can offer a buyer a good deal, but the major OEMs are not going to order significantly more than they think they can sell in a given period of time. Well, they might, but that is transcendentally stupid. Yeah, there are reports of channel stuffing all the time, usually by people who don't have a clue.
"Therefore, any market share numbers come from the market analysts like Dataquest (and they don't have the numbers, either)."
They have some. They can look at the retail figures and make decent guesses. They do miss the whitebox manufacturers and the SD shops, however. Indications are that is a large, and growing, percentage of the overall market. Which is why it would be nice to have the Intel numbers. |
