Paul, Some comments on PII shipments and prices.
True, Intel claims 25% of product shipped was PII, but it's becoming obvious there is a glut of PII PC's in the channels. Since most of those shipments will show up in Q4 PC's, (holiday consumer products), one has to wonder what Q1 shipments will be like. As I mentioned in another post, the consumer is savvy to the significant price reductions that show up after the holidays. Will the channels find themselves with a glut of inventory after the holiday? I had planned to give myself a Christmas upgrade to a PII266, but now I'll wait. How many others will do the same? All the major suppliers are offering PII 266 systems, fully configured with 17" monitors for about $2500, but what do you bet they're $300 cheaper in January. Micron sell a 200MHz Pentium MMX with 64MB SDRAM and 17" monitor for $2099! ($1799 in January?)
Last Christmas that would get you only a P200 with 16MB RAM and a 15" monitor from Micron! (I keep old PC mags just for this kind of comparison). Think of it, last Christmas there wasn't even an MMX, and in the past ten months Intel has introduced it and is now trying to kill it! And in spite of AMD's production problems, I believe the K6 is the reason Intel is trying to move the market away from PentiumMMX. Normally Intel wants a product to peak about 18 months after introduction, with a life of about three years. Now they're trying to peak the MMX after less than a year! And I also believe that the PII is coming down the learning curve faster than any CPU product Intel has ever introduced. A PII 233 for $300? And we're not talking about just a chip, but an encapsulated card with 2-3 chips, a lot of passive components, a fancy case and heat sink!
As I mentioned in a post last July, this is a new era for Intel. For the first time they are in a true commodity market and this is new to them. (Although I think part of this is due to the "Paranoid" culture that Andy has cultivated in Intel. Did they really have to react this violently to AMD and Cyrix?). I also think that the power of the PC has gone well beyond the demands of most users applications. What Intel needs is a new killer ap that the vast majority of users has to have on his PC. Right now a large percent of newbees only want the web, and a 486 is sufficient for that. In fact, while I will upgrade to a PII266, this old classic 166 does everything I want it to do. Just like new toys now and then.
Gene |
