AMD sues Intel

KdjaCL

This should be fun and with the Msft cae AMD should win.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel Corp., accusing its market-dominating competitor of forcing customers into exclusive deals to keep them from buying AMD microprocessors.
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The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleges Intel has bullied 38 companies, including large-scale computer-makers, wholesale distributors and retailers, to secure a monopoly in the highly competitive x86 microprocessor market.

The microprocessors run the Microsoft Windows, Solaris and
Linux families of operating systems. Santa Clara-based Intel's current market share of x86 microprocessors is about 80 percent of worldwide sales by unit volume and 90 percent by revenue.

"Everywhere in the world, customers deserve freedom of choice and the benefits of innovation — and these are being stolen away in the microprocessor market," said Hector Ruiz, president and chief executive officer of the Sunnyvale-based AMD.

He added that "people from Osaka to Frankfurt to Chicago pay the price in cash every day for Intel's monopoly abuses."

An Intel representative could not be reached before business hours Tuesday.

In March, Japan's anti-monopoly watchdog, the Fair Trade Commission, issued a warning to Intel, saying that the company was curbing competition in the microprocessor chip market by pressuring Japanese clients to buy its chips.

Intel denied the allegations but said at the time that the changes outlined in the agency's proposed cease-and-desist order would not affect its ability to compete in the Japanese marketplace.

The
European Commission has said it is pursuing an investigation against Intel for similar possible antitrust violations and is cooperating with Japanese authorities.

According to the complaint, Intel has forced major customers such as Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway and Hitachi into exclusive deals in return for cash payments and other deals. It also allegedly paid Sony millions of dollars for an exclusive deal on microprocessors and threatened retaliation against customers for introducing AMD computer platforms into their products.

Rick Whittington, a Caris & Co. analyst, said the legal action has been expected and breaks no new ground.

"The timing of this suit, in our view, is Sales and Marketing 101," he said in a research note. "Get the attention of the customer as market demand heats up and you have sizable supply coming down the pike. Put the competitor, to whatever extent possible, on the ropes and force them to adopt less aggressive sales tactics, if even marginal."

Shares of Intel fell 12 cents to $25.74 in pre-market trading, while shares of AMD rose 25 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $16.90.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050628/ap_on_hi_te/intel_antitrust_lawsuit_7


kdjac

Nukem

Bad publicity is still publicity.
Have to wonder though what the story is alright with Dell sticking with Intel,weren't they goin to make some machines with AMD a while back?

Stark

Nukem wrote:

Bad publicity is still publicity.
Have to wonder though what the story is alright with Dell sticking with Intel,weren't they goin to make some machines with AMD a while back?

They were, but Intel offered them tasty discounts to stay with them exclusively.

Mutant_Fruit

Stark wrote:

They were, but Intel offered them tasty discounts to stay with them exclusively.

Or was it more along the lines of that if they didn't stick with Intel, they wouldn't get such good discounts...

Peteee

Stark wrote:

They were, but Intel offered them tasty discounts to stay with them exclusively.

Tasty discounts?? I think not, read the lawsuit, I dont think i'll buy another intel again (wasn.t going to anyway, now that AMD are so far ahead of the game, but still!)

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/AMD-Intel_Full_Complaint.pdf

if ya wanna get to hte juicy stuff, go half way down the page.

Ishmael

Good, i hope AMD win.

Damn intel, just another reason to hate them i suppose.

jor el

I thought Intel were doing this for years now. At least I remember reading a few years back that they warned customers who were considering AMD that they (Intel) would not supply any Pentium processors to customers who started to offer AMD in their PCs. This would be a clear case of abuse but Intel so maybe it was just a rumor.

SouperComputer

thats a pretty interesting and comprehenisve article from AMD!

Should be interesting to see what BS Intel come out with.

I wonder if this is short-sighted by AMD though. Mobile computing I think the the future and I think the centrino, or rather the Pentium-M has done a pretty good job with that.

Anybody know if AMD have any big plans for the mobile market in the future?

davie_b

Thats good to hear intells monopoly on cpu with the larger companies is most dis heartening when 1 is trying to introduce people to the concept of quailty
non throttling cpu's