scheb - Re: "I guess its how each individual wants to interpret what they read. True?"
Perhaps.
Now try reading this.
infoworld.com
Intel CEO denies graphics chip dumping charges
By Rob Guth and Terho Uimonen
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 6:57 AM PT, Jun 11, 1998
TOKYO -- The newly appointed CEO of Intel, in an interview here Wednesday night, shot down recent reports that his company is selling its graphics chips at deep discounts in order to gain market share and reduce inventories of its first-generation graphics accelerator chip.
"[Bull]," said Intel President and CEO Craig Barrett when asked about charges that his company is selling the i740 chip at below cost.
"You would hope the press would pick out better sources than our competitors to describe our actions," he said. "It's kind of like going to [Sun Chairman Scott] McNealy and asking him about [Microsoft Chairman Bill] Gates," referring to two of the most well-known archenemies in the computer industry.
Barrett's comments follow reports this week that Intel is bundling the i740 chip with Pentium II processors at prices that would put the actual cost of the i740 at between $7 and $18. At those levels, the chip's cost would be far below its $28 list price, prompting several industry sources to claim Intel is "dumping" the chip, or selling it at below fair market value.
The reports originated from last week's Computex trade show in Taiwan -- where around 30 Taiwanese manufacturers displayed graphics add-in cards based on the i740 -- but quickly spread under the heat of an antitrust suit filed against Intel by the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) on Monday.
The FTC complaint argued that Intel is withholding intellectual property from customers and is using its market monopoly power to "cement its dominance over the microprocessor market."
At the interview in Tokyo Wednesday night, Intel spokesman Howard High said the company investigated the i740 dumping rumors and found no evidence that the chips were selling at a discount. Instead, according to Intel partners in Taiwan, High said, the i740 sticker is about $24 "and they said they'll go to $22 in another quarter or so."
Industry sources in Taiwan, however, put the i740's current price at around $20.
Though Intel will likely shrug off this week's controversy, the chip giant probably has not heard the last from the graphics chip community, which is under threat as Intel expands onto its turf, analysts said.
First introduced in February of this year, the i740 marked Intel's long-expected entry into the graphics chip arena. To speed up the chip's development, Intel used 3-D technology from Real 3D, which it has a stake in, as well as 2-D capabilities from Chips and Technologies, which was acquired by Intel earlier this year.
To date, most graphics chips in desktop PCs have ridden on add-in graphics cards. In higher-end systems, the superior performance of dedicated graphics add-in cards is still expected to remain a major market for chip and board vendors alike, and market analysts generally predict a bright future for the graphics chip industry.
Market researcher In-Stat, for example, in a recent report forecast average annual graphics chip sales growth of 20 percent from 1997 to 2002, with desktop graphics revenues growing at 15 percent, while notebook graphics sales are expected to grow even faster at 31 percent annually.
In the cut-throat low-end PC business, however, many vendors now are looking to cut costs by adding the graphics straight on to the motherboard.
At Computex last week, several major motherboard makers, including Asustek Computer and First International Computer, showcased new so-called all-in-one motherboards featuring on-board graphics chips. Designed to run Intel's low-end Celeron processors, the boards are targeted at the piping hot market for sub-$1,000 PCs, officials said.
The next step is integration of graphics capabilities straight onto the processor, a strategy that was pioneered by Cyrix's MediaGX line of processors, while Intel's main move to date in that direction has been the graphics-enhancing features in its MMX instruction set.
"Innovate, integrate, innovate, integrate, that's the way the industry works," Intel's Barrett said. "Graphics was a stand-alone graphics card; then it's going to be a stand-alone graphics chip and then part of that's going to get integrated into the main CPU."
Barrett on Wednesday shrugged off MediaGX's graphics capabilities as "crummy," but did not give details when Intel will fold more graphics capabilities into its own CPUs. He predicted, however, that following a general industry trend "you will see some reasonable
graphics capabilities integrated into processors in the next couple of years."
Meanwhile, Intel is also working on a follow-up to the 440EX chip set targeted at the low-end Celeron processor. Code-named Whitney, the chip set is scheduled for release in the first half of next year and is expected to feature an integrated version of the i740, a move which is sure to cause further consternation in the graphics industry, industry observers said.
Intel Corp., in Santa Clara, Calif., can be reached at intel.com.
Rob Guth is a correspondent in the Tokyo bureau of the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld
affiliate. Terho Uimonen is a correspondent in the Taipei, Taiwan, bureau of the news
service.
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Paul |
