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

To: Elmer who wrote (87535)	1/16/2000 10:47:00 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572165

Re: It's because of MotherBoard constraints I hear the apologetic AMDroids cry in unison... IMHO :-) There were plenty of Motherboards by mid Q4, the problem for AMD was that they had to sit on and downbin some inventory in order to maintain product differentiation - the market wasn't ready for as large a volume of high end AMD branded parts as AMD (somewhat to its surprise, I suspect) had available. In other words, my guess is that AMD could have increased total revenue by selling more 650MHZ label parts at greatly reduced (from what were charged) prices - but they didn't. Instead they exchanged lower total revenues in exchange for establishing Athlon as a premium brand. The Celeron and K6-X had moved up to the 500MHZ PIII by mid Q4 - those parts should have been dumped or run through a premium OEM that could have maintained appearances. Fewer price cuts should have been taken to squeeze some of the final demand out of the market - that might have left a little more on the table for AMD but putting high end parts in giveaway PCs was a bad move. Intel seem to be doing anything it can to take market share back from AMD - even if it causes more hurt to itself than to AMD. This is the kind of behavior that AMD is always being accused of. Shipping off a big batch of PIIIs to eMachines infuriated Gateway and will be confusing customer's perceptions of PIII vs. Celeron for awhile - it was a bonehead move, but caused no serious damage. Intel's brands are well established and can endure a certain amount of such activity. But it was the kind of shortsighted mistake we would have expected from AMD, not Intel. It's just another recent example of Intel looking amatureish and ignorant of the business, while AMD looks confident and professional (by maintaining the price/MHZ of the Athlon to establish it as a premium chip, despite being forced to accept lower total revenue in exchange). Intel had a good quarter, and will have a great year this year, but it just doesn't seem like the old Intel lately. Dan

To: Elmer who wrote (87535)	1/16/2000 11:43:00 PM
From: enzyme	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1572165

re: Brilliant enzyme. Intel had all time record sales and all time record profits. They shipped more processors then ever shipped in history. The .18u process is the fastest ramping process in Intel's history and you figure this means poor management. Elmer, it is possible to attain all time production records and still leave money on the table. This money is allowing AMD to survive. If Intel did not want AMD to survive then they made key strategic mistakes. If Intel does want AMD to survive then they are executing flawlessly. I do not think Intel wants AMD to survive thus I think they have made key strategic errors in not having enough capacity to fullfill demand. re: As AMD has shown with Dresden it takes them over 3 years to get a fab into production. By your reasoning, Intel made their management mistakes over 3 years ago when they didn't start a new fab... I feel it is atrocious that AMD has taken this long to get Dresden on line. I wonder if the delays are due to engineering or monetary problems or both. As for Intel, yes I think mistakes were made a while ago... and I also don't think it was 3 years ago. I think Intel does have incredible abilities in bringing Fabs on line and can do so much faster than AMD... which brings me back to the previous paragraph. It is also possible that even with Intel's warchest they simply cannot keep AMD at bay, but since Cyrix, IDT, USLI, and Nat Semi could not keep up, I'm not giving AMD the benefit of the doubt... I'm actually giving it to Intel. It's not about winning, it's about making you keep getting an ever expanding piece of an ever expanding pie. Maybe it is Intel's long term goal (to insure market dominance) to keep letting AMD gain a bit whenever the SEC gets too close... and then slam them for a while... and then let them gain... and then slam them... coda. In the long run I really only care about each companies stock price. If both are able to execute in a rapidly growing market then all the better. I'd invest in Via also if I could. 'zyme