To: OldAIMGuy who wrote (6071 ) 1/26/1998 3:29:00 PM From: Rob S. Read Replies (1) | Respond to
I think your perception of the "Intel Inside" campaign mirrors the overal effect they are having. Several years ago when Intel was first faced with the threat of AMD and Cyrix entereing the market, they made the brilliant move to brand the uP in the minds of the consumer. Even though the threat didn't materialize as quickly as it might have, Intel poured literally billions of dollars into their ad campaign and promo dollars (pay-backs to dealers and OEMs to joint advertise). About $100 of every uP Intel has sold over the past few years has gone into these costs. Intel's strategy with the PII was to carry on the premium price point/high promotion strategy rather than to concentrate resources on the design of more efficient, lower cost and more maintainable systems architectures (with all the billions in revenue Intel has achieved for several years shouldn't consumers expect something better than the present state of the cludgy PC?). Regardless of Intel having done some things to enhance the architecture, the major focus has been to migrate users to ever more expensive systems. The bottom dropped out of this strategy with the success of Cyrix and the belated entry into the market of a low price strategy by AMD. OEMs and consumers are left with the choice, pay 150-$250 more for a system that offers few, if any, benefits over competitive systems or "settle" for a high-performance system at a lower cost. The market has largely spoken; the sub $1000 market segment has become the largest growth segment by far, capturing over 40% of consumer slaes and starting to have a big impact in corporate sales.
