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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (143192)	9/10/2001 12:45:04 AM
From: THE WATSONYOUTH	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

It's the same reason why an 8-way Xeon system from HP (or Dell, or Compaq, or whomever) will cost less. Itanium will be higher volume than POWER4. Well if Intel charges OEMs $1.5K for Itanium chips in volume, what do you think it costs IBM to produce Power4 chips. If it is less than $1.5K, then just where does this cost advantage lie? In the chipsets? Intel marks them up as well. If IBM wants to compete on a cost basis... they can, especially if they know they will get sufficient income from softeware/middleware/ and services on those accounts. In such a scenario, Intel would need to sell Itanium at near cost to make Itanium systems more attractive from a cost basis. It comes down to what margin level is acceptable. It may come down to selling the hardware at near cost in order to keep the more profitable part of the business. I don't know what route IBM will take. But their options are open. THE WATSONYOUTH

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (143192)	9/10/2001 1:06:28 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Tenchusatsu, <<<In comparison to the current batch of high-end RISC servers and mainframes, Itanium servers are commodities , even with Intel's exorbitant price per processor. Nothing about POWER4 will change that.>>> There goes that "C word" again. Intel marketing has spent a fortune making "Intel Inside" unique. Is Itanium really a commodity? The definition of a commodity is goods or services the customer finds indistinguishable from another. For many items like gasoline and laundry detergent are commodities - one brand is perceived to be as good or the same as another. When customers buy Itanium from OEMs, they are buying not just a processor but the IA64 platform and architecture. To allow or encouraging the Joe Osha's, Dan Niles, and other shallow beings of the world to refer to the Itanium architecture as a commodity and letting them compare apples to oranges in some off hand self serving sound bite is a real shame. Mary