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

To: Chris Carlson who wrote (77564)	4/1/1999 2:22:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

The government --- thankfully I don't work for them So it's just my opinion. Given the hypothetical situation of AMD going under, and the FTC winning whatever new case it brings against INTC that allows it to describe INTC as a monopoly: Then it would depend upon INTC's arguments. It would hardly be possible for them to argue that they didn't have the ability to set CPU prices at any level if their main competitor AMD was bankrupt! The consumer would certainly know it from sticker shock. As to the workstation and server markets, they would still have to argue that there was sufficient competition for them to be able to set prices freely. Once again INTC doesn't really compete yet in many segments of that market with SUNW and IBM and yet completely dominates the small server segment even more so now that it would if AMD comes out with the K7. In a Merced environment they begin to compete in those markets as well. So someone could argue their pricing should be regulated with regard to servers and workstations too. I think it would be an unprecedented situation. But I also think that what happens in the MSFT trial is going to set some precedents. I would rather have the whole issue avoided by keeping AMD in the game. Who knows what remedy for monopoly pricing the FTC would come up with! ============= The answer is for INTC to diversify and apply its manufacturing strengths to other market segments. It has too many eggs in the Wintel basket. It's association with MSFT is a heavy burden. Thus far it confronts AMD, with Merced it confronts IBM and SunW.