Re: Intel was never a really big name company until they launched the "Pentium",
Take a look at this link:
mgt.smsu.edu
The table below compares the operating margins of Intel and its biggest rival, AMD, from 1986 through 1990. 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990
AMD -13% -3% 3% 6% -3%
Intel -11% 19% 25% 22% 28% The 386 was launched in late 1985, became generally available in 1986, and was adopted by IBM and widely sold starting in 1987. Selling the "next generation of chips", 32-bit against 16-bit chips, let Intel come to dominate the industry, and AMD is following that rather obvious path to take control (well, try to take control) of the mainstream desktop, workstation, server, and mobile markets.
Today's "next generation" is 64-bit chips. That's a big marketing card to play. Intel decided to use the 64-bit "card" to let it segment the high end and the low end. If Intel controlled the CPU market, as it expected to when this strategy was adopted, that strategy would have worked beautifully, but as it is it's beginning to look like Intel's segmentation strategy of making its 32-bit desktops, workstations, notebooks, and small servers the "low end" is blowing up in its face. |
