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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Goutam who wrote (3502)	8/3/2000 11:48:55 AM
From: andreas_wonisch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Goutama, Re: But the question is when did AMD realize this window of opportunity, and shifted its production more towards athlons? I suspect it had happened in June when it noticed delays with KT133 chipsets. I don't know if this is really good news. The problem is that AMD stated three months ago (if I remember correctly) that they have stopped classic Athlon wafers. Sure, they can sell some Slot A-Thunderbirds but not that many because of the problem with the KX-133 chipset. So the majority of sold Athlons will/must be Socket A cpus this quarter. And the question remains how many KT-133 chipsets are available right now... However, I think it's still better to sell the high-margin Socket A Thunderbirds rather than the Durons in a chipset constrained situation. BTW, and at least here in Germany the Thunderbirds for Socket A (especially with the Asus A7V) are selling like hot cakes. Many online vendors are regulary sold out and can't meet the high demand. Andreas

To: Goutam who wrote (3502)	8/3/2000 12:38:44 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Goutama - RE: "The company is probably willing to cede market share at the low end in order to gain revenues share, and to bolster it's ASP. But the question is when did AMD realize this window of opportunity, and shifted its production more towards athlons? I suspect it had happened in June when it noticed delays with KT133 chipsets." I don't know what to make of this article and that analyst's comment. The Duron launch was the WORST OEM launch AMD has had since the K6-III came out, and that was a HUGE FLOP. Even the August Athlon launch last year was better than the current OEM Duron situation, and that isn't saying too much. AMD screwed up so badly on this launch to OEMs, it is just so unbelievable. However, AMD says the Duron is sold out. That statement completely throws me off. Can the screwdriver shops handle all this supply? Probably not. Is a really huge OEM Duron launch coming for the holiday season? The current situation makes me think this is a probably not also. I'm not betting on this. Are overseas markets sucking this thing up? We can't tell since we're in America. I guess we'll eventually find out.

To: Goutam who wrote (3502)	8/3/2000 2:23:38 PM
From: Charles R	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Goutama, << More "great" news: AMD's Duron will miss back-to-school rush> When I read just the article title, and your remark, I got confused. After reading the full article I'd have to say it's great news for AMD from the revenue share, and earnings point of view.> It is never a "great news" to completely miss a high volume season. Back-to-school is roughly two months long - from Independence day weekend to about the second week of September. In my post a little while back ( Message 14107584 ) I wrote-off one complete month of this season for Durons. Now, we are officially writing off another month. Now, this is not to say Duron sales are completely lost. I am sure AMD will recover some of it in the form of Athlons and K6s but we are basically talking about one more lost opportunity. Some of the chipsets/motherboards built for Duron would be useful for pushing Athlons. This is one thing that irks me about AMD - the perennial string of lost opportunities. IMHO, AMD will still make close to 7Mu that is being forecasted (these guys probably knew at least a month back that Durons are out of question for back to school). So, the forecasted numbers will be met. So, this is not a "bad news" in that sense. That people can panic and sell on this kind of stuff is because they can't trust Jerry/AMD. It is incredible how incompetent Jerry & Co are in setting investor expectations. Clearly this fiasco was well know at the time of conf call. So, instead of saying the bogus positive things about infrastructure, they should have flat out said there was a problem and that limited their growth in Q2 and is limiting their growth in Q2 somewhat. And, may be spend time on how they are fixing this problem going forward. I don't even want to get started on the total incompetence on the infrastructure side. These guys have messedup infrastructure launches 2 years in a row! People blaming Via should note that AMD owns this problem not Via. The upside is the product strength. Lo Just about the only upside I can see from this situation is that AMD will probably push Athlon more aggressively in the high-end and commercial markets and get some incremental design wins which they would not have gotten if they were fat/dumb/happy with a good Duron launch. Chuck

To: Goutam who wrote (3502)	8/3/2000 3:16:41 PM
From: Petz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Goutama, re:lack of back-to-school Duron's. While I can see that a one-month delay for KT-133 was too much for Compaq and HP's traditional distribution model, it seems to me that Gateway could have and should have capitalized on their slowness and brought out Duron systems. And I don't really buy the "its better for AMD to sell Athlons anyway" argument. 1. I don't think there's demand for more than 2.6 million Athlons in Q3. That means 1 million Durons have to be sold to meet expectations. 2. It wouldn't make much sense for production to be switched from Duron to Athlon in June because of KT133 chipset delay. It doesn't alleviate the KT133 shortage problem because none of the Athlons with L2 cache work well with KX133 chipsets and there's hardly any Irongate boards left. I think for a short time, lack of KT133 was the problem, so TBirds were going straight into motherboards and Durons were going into inventory. But now the problem is HWP and CPQ. 3. IMO, CPQ and HWP are being extremely shortsighted not adopting the Duron because it doesn't fit into their pre-defined schedule. The average consumer has no clue when a computer was introduced and the idea of coming out with the "2000 back to school line" on August 1 is anchronistic. All the consumer cares about is the MHz, the price and the features. They'll wind up selling nothing because Celeron supplies will dry up and all this because some marketing guy at CPQ said, "Sorry, we can't come out with any new computers between Sept 1 and Nov 1." What a bunch of malarkey. 4. THere better be an announcement by CPQ, HWP or GTW by Sept 1 because I don't think the small-builders can sell 1 million Durons. frustrated, well at least the stock is up now Petz