To: Scumbria who wrote (65657 ) 2/9/2001 12:05:07 PM From: Dave B Read Replies (1) | Respond to IBM used to be in that position in the PC business, and then Compaq made inroads and took over the lead. Then Dell started slowly and is now poised to take over from Compaq. direct customer of IBM/Dell/Compaq. Each of these companies has successively taken market share from the preceeding one by providing more in the way of the business relationship that the customer wants. Compaq came along and took business away from IBM by having a closer relationship with PC customers (IBM, even though it was selling PCs, thought of them as just an adjunct to the big iron business so didn't provide much personalized attention to the PC guys). Dell came along and offered customers a better way to get exactly what you want in a system and get it quickly. On top of all this, these companies sold customers on their ability to support the products, the quality of their products, et cetera. Corporate customers don't just buy a chip, they buy a relationship.direct customers for AMD are Gateway, Dell, IBM, HP, etc. The question then becomes, what is AMD going to do to make it easier for these customers to do business with AMD rather than Intel? Are they going to provide higher quality products? Better support and service policies? Faster delivery? Guaranteed quantities? Better financing terms? And so on.
