Paul, RE<<Now why would Intel want to COMPETE WITH THE OS Companies that are already helping Intel?
Does competing with your partners make one iota of common sense to you?>>
It does if one of those partners is earning money that rightfully belongs to you.
One of Andy Grove's greatest legacies was his prescient decision to sharply increase capacity several years ago when no one else thought demand would come close to using that capacity. It was a highly risky strategy, and if he had been wrong Intel would have been in serious trouble. Instead, Intel's revenue and earnings growth were well in excess of what was thought imaginable.
Without Intel, Microsoft's success would have been much more muted, and the PC would be no where near as ubiquitous as it is today. On the other hand, without Microsoft, odds are that the world wouldn't be that much different, with another operating system filling the gap.
And yet, even as Intel has continually lowered the price nominally for continually superior products, Microsoft has kept the price of their product flat; in fact, once we are all forced into upgrading from the consumer targeted Win 95/98 to NT (as you well know, Win 98 will be orphaned), the price for the Microsoft OS will in fact increase. The price for an operating system will be higher than the price for a microprocessor, unless Intel recognizes that they, not Microsoft, are the one with leverage. |
