Re:... it dealt with the comoditization of the cpu market
aki,
First, as CH pointed out, this has been said many times before (486, 586 yada yada yada). I am not sure whether or not this will come to fruition, my guess is no and for the following reason. CPU's are becoming increasingly complex and new generations will take HUGE sums of $$ to develop/manufacture. IMO, this is why we are seeing the INTC/HP partnership with Merced, INTC's next chip. The costs involved in getting one of these to market is too large for INTC to bear alone. And if they cannot do it with the $9B+ cash hoard, then how in he** is AMD going to do it? IMO again, there will likely be partnerships down the road as no one company wants to bet the farm on the success of one product. Probably see INTC/HP and IBM/AMD or something similar. As to the commoditization, it is waaay to early to tell. But if I had to wager, I'd place my bets on INTC. INTC is not known for giving up any markets; but if the margins are thin enough on the sub-1000 pc's then we may see a change of heart by INTC. However, this runs counter to their scorched-earth strategy, where they simply cut the prices of low end chips so the competitors can not make any $$ to invest in future generations. My guess would be on the latter, but since this appears to be another "inflection point"(from A. Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive") there could be any number of changes INTC makes in their strategy. Guess what I'm trying to say is we'll have to wait and see<GGG>
regards,
Brian |
