Real World Technologies, an Intel/AMD distributor with no axe to grind says Celeron sales stink
realworldtech.com
News for 7/20/98
AMD K6-2 processors and Super 7 boards continue to dominate the hardware sales, despite Intel's claims for a 'fast' Celeron ramp-up. To this point, distributors and vendors simply cannot keep the K6-2 processors in stock. Of course, at least part of the reason for this is AMDs inability to ship sufficient quantities to the retail channel. Now that OEMs like IBM and Compaq have started using the processors, it has been difficult for 'retail' vendors to get these. AMD has assured us that the supply should be *very* good starting in August.
The K6-2 333 may only show up on the gray market, because the AMD channel reps don't like the idea of this processor being sold retail. Most motherboard manufacturers are reluctant to implement a new revision of their products just to implement a special 'one-time' bus speed, and customers will not be happy to shell out another $100 or so to support this single processor. Besides, they also know that nobody will actually purchase a new board - they will just run the 333 at 3.5 x 100MHz on their existing ones. OEMs love the 333s, of course, because they are only concerned with overall processor speed and 333MHz is definitely a bigger number than 300MHz, and they can have them soon. Due to this situation, the retail channel may have to wait until the 350MHz processors become available in Q4 to get faster processors. The retail channel reps like this situation much better, because the processors will work on existing boards.
Most component vendors are selling very few of the Celeron processors, though we have no doubt that the CPU is being shipped to OEMs. We suspect that Intel's claims for the Celeron having the fastest ramp-up of any Intel processor is partly a numbers game. The way that they determine the speed of a ramp-up is based upon percentage of sales, so it would certainly make sense that the Celeron's percentage of sales is rising very quickly, because the 'standard' PII processors are all but unavailable except through the gray market. It also appears that distributors may have stocked up on the processors in anticipation of selling them fairly quickly, but our distributors indicate that they have very large quantities sitting in their warehouses. Intel may have shipped these, and included them in their last quarter numbers, but they aren't really selling!
Of course, everyone is aware of the Intel price moves on July 26. They will adjust the prices on 'most' of their PII processors at that time. Of course, since the only PIIs currently available are Celeron and the 350/400MHz, it doesn't really matter that much. Of course, AMD and Cyrix will have to adjust their prices also, but it seems that AMD will wait at least a week before doing so to see exactly what the new prices will be, and whether it affects their sales anyway. This is a smart move by AMD, at this point. Lowering their prices will affect their profits, and their processors are selling like hotcakes anyway!!
Petz |
