AMD Pours Salt on Intel’s Wounds
May 19, 2009 by Rico Mossesgeld
Filed under Trends
Courtesy of Associated Content
“The abuse of market power to protect a monopoly hurts consumers and hinders innovation — locking out smaller rivals that may have better products with new features or lower prices. With an 80 percent to 90 percent share of the microprocessor market, Intel wields much more power than your local supermarket. Its threat to raise prices the moment a customer tries to buy from rival A.M.D. can lock in even the largest computer makers — which depend on Intel for most of their products and can’t simply swap all their processors overnight. And with such a level of control, Intel doesn’t have to exert itself to come up with new and better products.” — The New York Times (Oct. 29, 2007)
“[Caris & Co. analyst Rick] Whittington says he’s convinced that Intel manipulated the market to its favor. ‘Whether that was illegal or not is not my decision. That’s for the courts to decide,’ he said. ‘But Intel did adopt heavy-handed tactics.” — Investor’s Business Daily (Jan. 2, 2007)
“South Korean consumers had to buy PCs at higher prices as domestic PC makers were forced to buy Intel’s pricier CPU.” (June 5, 2008)
Granted, the majority of quotes are hardly timely, and at least one website has accused AMD not having their priorities straight. But in the ever-competitive microprocessor market, AMD has to take advantage of every opportunity. Besides, compiling all those quotes must’ve been easy for one employee to accomplish. Minimum effort, maximum damage.
