Dan,
There isn't enough capacity in the world to take up Intel's slack if they all-of-a-sudden decided to triple prices. You're right that "medium/long term, nothing stays production bound," which is exactly what I was saying myself. But the point is, it takes 2 years and 2 billion dollars to get one fab up and running; so if Intel were thinking short term, they could price-gouge like hell if they wanted.
Yeah, IBM is certainly one to watch. Personally, I don't know why they didn't get into x86 a long time ago. They were Cyrix's and NexGenn's foundry--could have easily bought one of the companies but instead stuck to the PowerPC chip.
And just so you know: I haven't owned INTC for quite some time, and don't see myself owning it again any time soon. Like I said, 1998 is in the toilet for them, so I'm not interested. Right now, it looks like 1999 will be better, but it's still a long way off. And I am not "in awe" of Intel, or even close.
With Celeron, perhaps they believe that when real PentiumIIs reach that price point, Celeron will still be far cheaper? Looks like the longer-term position of it isn't for sub-1000 PCs, but sub-500 or internet appliances and the like. I don't know. But if it really isn't meant to be in the PC market, then that explains why Intel didn't keep the Pentium brand name on that chip (that's what I think). |
