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

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (67014)	1/3/2002 3:28:46 PM
From: niceguy767	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Jim: Why fight it??? AMD already has stated that they will achieve record unit and record processor revenues in q4??? Y

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (67014)	1/3/2002 4:10:00 PM
From: peter_luc	Respond to of 275872

Jim, I think that Andreas is right concerning the Quantispeed rating. It has improved AMD's position enormously. It demonstrates the higher value of AMD's chips to the public in a much better way than any TV spot could have done. It allows to demand far higher prices and, last but not least, the release of much more speed grades than would otherwise have been possible. However, it is indeed a very serious issue that AMD seems to be locked out of the US retail market. OTOH: Maybe AMD is still "lucky" in this quarter (I mean Q4) because they could not have served all markets - not yet. I believe that AMD is almost sold out already by the DIY and overseas markets. And AMD may get a lot more money from the retail channels than they would have got from the big OEMs. Of course, AMD has to work on its presence in the US retail market (as in the European notebook market). This will be of great importance for Q1 and later. But this quarter they may have done very well despite of this problem. BTW: I believe that there may be three main reasons for AMD's lack in the US retail market (besides certain "Godfather deals" by Intel): - First, Intel may have promised the moon to the big OEMs - that i845 plus cheap SDRAM is the best thing since sliced bred. High clock rates plus the Intel branding, all at affordable prices - for many that seemed to be the winning formula. (Unfortunately they forgot about performance.) Once again, AMD seemed to be headed for roadkill. So the big OEMs were all stacked up with i845+SDRAM combos (and may have been wondering about sell-through problems afterwards). - Second, Mike Magee once reported that the big OEMs were very unhappy with the high Athlon XP pricing. They were used to high-end Athlon CPUs for under $100. At the last CC, Jerry said that it is AMD's primary concern to improve ASP. So AMD may have refused to go on selling their wonderful chips for a bred and a butter to the big OEMs but decided to sell their chips to the DIY and overseas markets instead, which received them with open arms. - Third, as Mike Magee (once again) reported, HP and other big OEMs heavily counted on the nForce chipset. Unfortunately, that turned out to be the greatest disappointment in this quarter. HP was reported to be furious about the lack of this product. All these three reasons combined may have resulted in this unhappy situation in the US retail market. Let us hope that it is going to improve soon. Peter