Dell and AMD do business, Intel drops

Stan Beer
Saturday, 20 May 2006 15:32

Your IT - Home IT

Some analysts are shouting the sky is falling on Intel because leading PC maker Dell has for the first time decided to diversify its processor supplier base from one to two suppliers. Dell is going to give a small portion of its servers business to AMD, the market gets nervous, slashes a couple of percent off Intel stock, and analysts are shouting that there's still another 10% of slashing to come.

Let's put things in perspective. Intel has about 80% market share and AMD has most of the rest. It's true that AMD has made some gains in the last few quarters but then Intel has just won an exclusive supplier deal with Apple. Intel has just released its dual-core processor Core Duo product range and, litigation aside, Windows Vista is just around the corner. China and India are ramping up as major PC markets.

Intel has its platform branding in place, a new generation of processors pumping through the production lines, a new exclusive big name desktop and notebook customer, the prospect of a new Windows operating system which will almost certainly require a fair percentage of users to upgrade their hardware, and the sky is falling?

AMD may well have taken four or five percent of Intel in recent months but where is the systemic damage? The PC market needs processors and Intel is the biggest supplier by a country mile.

Even if the prediction of some analysts that AMD could grab 30% of server market share does come true (and that's pure conjecture), that's just servers! Desktops is where the turnover is and Intel is still the only company capable of meeting global demand.