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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (72817)	9/23/1999 9:48:00 AM
From: Burt Masnick	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1572025

Re:"it cannot sell the P3 against the faster Athlon, there is no reason to buy the P3, only to watch its value and price avalanche." I would guess that AMD has sold 250,000 Athlons in Q3. I would guess that Intel sold 10,000,000 P3s in Q3. If (since both numbers are guesses) Intel sold 40 times as many P3s as AMD sold Athlons, at this point at least, the story of AMD being a winner is, at the very least, premature. As far as profits, I don't know the number for either company. But there is some buzz that Intel might preannounce better than expected earnings. There is also some buzz that AMD might preannounce, but I don't think it's because better than expected earnings are anticipated. AMD is getting a profits boost - from Flash. Not because their product is superior but because the cell phone explosion has created a booming market for anyone with available product. AMDs K6 line is a textbook business school disaster. Their management style is medieval. Their board gets awards for being in the five worst in the US (annually from Forbes, I think). Their executive staff has had periodic voluntary or forced swan dives from the building roof. The guy running their showcase Dresden plant is definitely hurled from the roof. Their June, er July, er August, er September launch of the Athlon is another textbook case of how not to launch a product. Yes, it is a good design, but high speed ones are so rare that every sighting is reported on this thread like Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster. In other words, they are rare and often hard to confirm. In any case, there is no serious volume of them. Oh yeah. The G4 for Apple, built on an extremely similar copper process to AMD's coming Dresden process, must be yielding crummy for Motorola to blow the opportunity to sell lots of high price high margin parts. Gotta give you a warm feeling about Dresden copper. Leaving aside the superb handling of the Mobo situation and the superb price action of the past week, the list of uh-ohs for AMD is, to say the least, interesting. All that having been said, AMD has made for itself a window of opportunity to make the Athlon a success. But the window isn't wide open, the opportunity is less than a slam dunk as far as ease or difficulty and AMD's track record scares both OEM customers and investors. In my book, AMD is a speculation, not an investment. The Sanders song book of "This quarter was lousy, but the next one will be great" is gonna get played again in about 3 weeks. Even a corpse can begin to predict what his report will be like. If Intel is doing so badly, from whence come their almost $2 billion in profits for the next quarter. Since you guys believe there is little profit from the Celerons, gotta be from the P3 and the Xeon. I know - "It's all from the Xeon, and the Athlon Pro will take that away from Intel". If you think the boxmakers have long memories about former AMD manufacturing disappointments, wait till you see that the serious server guys want from their processor vendor. Not an easy sell. No one really knows what the future holds. All any of us can do is look at the situation and place our bets based on our own take on the objective situation. We are all projecting the future and we all have cloudy crystal balls. In my view, AMD MAY be able to snake through the mine field but I don't see it as guaranteed or a slam dunk. I admire the AMD crowd for courage and "going for the long ball". Time will tell whether they connect or strike out. For sure, AMD has pushed Intel hard. That's the great thing about competition. Brings out the best in all competitors. Next 12 months gonna be the most interesting period imaginable. Thrills and chills for everyone. Good luck. And, oh yeah, have a good day. Regards, Burt