Not good for Intel? Pentium II and Celeron not selling well. Plant closings. This article seems to verify that.
AMD has the tiger by the tail...
realworldtech.com
AMD has discontinued their K6-233 processor. This means that all fabs will now be
manufacturing with the .25 micron technology. In addition, IBM will be coming online soon with
their fabs for AMD processors. It seems that 3rd quarter should see very good availability of
the K6 and K6-2 processors. This will certainly be good news to both resellers and consumers,
as recent shortages have created a big problem with retailers. Since IBM and HP have
introduced K6-2 based computers, we expect that most of the available product has been sent
their way and caused the current shortages we are seeing.
In what must be good news to AMD, many customers are opting to purchase just a Super 7
motherboard, and wait for better K6-2 availability. Since these motherboards can run 'older'
processors without a problem (for the most part), this is actually seen as a 'smarter' upgrade
path, and will keep those customers in the AMD (Socket 7) playing field.
Intel's recent plant shutdown is a further indication of two major trends in the industry. Though
summer is typically very slow for resellers and manufacturers, this year has been one of the
slowest on record, only partly due to the Asian financial crisis. Intel has not seen anywhere
near the sales that they projected for the Pentium II and Celeron processors, while AMD has
been slow to get their much-desired product to the marketplace in sufficient quantity. Though
Intel has worked very hard to promote the benefits of Slot I and the P II, many consumers are
simply not buying it (pun intended).
The other, perhaps more significant reason seems to be that AMD has gained a great deal of
recognition for their K6 and K6-2 processors, so many consumers have been waiting for the
Super 7 boards/systems to appear. OEM sales are not as sensitive to this trend, because
system purchasers are more interested in price and big name recognition, so this trend has not
been as obvious to industry observers as to those who actually sell the components. With the
success of AMD systems during Christmas, and the anticipated success of K6-2 systems this
summer, we believe that the numbers will show that AMD has gained significant market share
in 1998, due to their increased name recognition and pricing. |
