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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (17568)	2/10/2000 12:21:00 AM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

Re. AMD and LINUX First Linux. There are two questions to consider. Is there a G or K play here and what is the effect of the Linux phenomena upon Microsoft? Although I have a couple of small Linux positions, I doubt there will ever be anything more than a set of competing princes in this space. Each will have its own set of proprietary "value added" features. One must remember that the mindset of the Linux community is antithetical to the emergence of powerful top dog (much less a pongid). If anyone has any contrary arguments, I would be most interested. As for Linux's threat to Microsoft, this lies in the formally NT now 2000 area. I suspect the threat is more serious than many Softie fans realize. Already in the ISP market, Linux's ease of installation has given it great success in this niche market. Moreover in many enterprise sub-markets that have long been Unix shops, Linux has the advantage of being familiar. The former idea that NT (now 2000) will sweep aside the fragmented Unix community is far less sure. On the desktop, the current WIN98 area, despite Corel's attempts, I don't believe Microsoft is that threatened. AMD has perennially been touted as ready to dethrone Intel. It just never seems to happen. Now anyone that remembers what Zilog did to Intel in the 8-bit days knows its possible. In fact, I always believed Zilog was responsible for much of Andy's paranoia. But realize there has been no love lost been Tom's Hardware and Intel for years. Hence this is hardly an unbiased report. OTOH it is precisely at transitions (like 32 bit to 64 bit) that stumbles can be critical. Intel's strong suit has always been their ability to execute - to produce large numbers of chips. This has been AMD's weakness. Until we see results from Dresden, I'll remain skeptical. Jerry Sanders has failed to deliver the goods too many times. Actually I'm somewhat heartened by these developments. A significant hazard for a Main Street gorilla is overconfidence and a lack of being "fighting trim". The competition (hear that DOJ) will do both of them (INTC and MSFT) good. I suspect, like Twain any death reports (at this juncture) are "an exaggeration". lurking... lurqer