Paul,
Who is counting them out ? They are COUNTING THEMSELVES OUT !
I'm more talking about the theory, not the practice. Right now, we all know what's happening to the current competitors, AMD and Cyrix. I currently believe that if AMD didn't go so gung-ho trying to take on the 800-lb gorilla, they could be concentrating on saving their other businesses while at the same time keeping the K6 a viable alternative to Intel's low-end. Then AMD could be a real nicely-run business and not such a high-risk gamble.
Cyrix is near dead in the water - uncompetitive in performance and their low ball pricing isn't attracting any significant customers.
Intel seems more concerned with Cyrix's MediaGX more than anything. OK, so Intel's not shivering in fear, but they do know that the concept of integrating graphics is something that Cyrix has just proven to be viable. Of course, Cyrix tripped over its own shoes, but that's another story.
As for IDT - yes, they have a low power CPU - but low performance - and once again, they have attracted no significant customers.
But I'm pretty confident that they can push the performance to a level acceptable by those who just want a laptop that doesn't need to be fast, but can last a long time without recharging. That's one niche market that Intel will have a hard time addressing because (1) the volume for this particular market segment is low (i.e. ROI stinks from Intel's perspective, but not from IDT's), and (2) the current P6 core is still too power-hungry, despite all the wonderful power-saving measures that Intel has developed.
Remember, Paul, even in the midst of Intel's market segmentation, Intel can't afford to cover all the bases. (If you really want more examples of why Intel can't, just tell me and I'll e-mail them to you personally.) It's that 3 to 4% of the market that Intel won't bother to pursue. If IDT and Rise can keep things small and stick to the fundamentals, they can cover this gap and make a small fortune.
This is vastly different from AMD's strategy of betting their entire savings just to gain market share from a giant whom they thought would not bother to fight back.
Tenchusatsu |
