Slashdot Mirror
Intel Replies to AMD Antitrust Lawsuits
pr1000 writes "The New York Times is reporting today that Intel has replied sharply to AMD's lawsuit. This lawsuit sounds like it will be a bruiser." From the article: "The claims are factually incorrect and contradictory...The evidence will show that every failure and setback for which A.M.D. today seeks to blame Intel is actually a direct result of A.M.D.'s own actions or inactions."
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoo m/0,,51_104_543~100845,00.html
I still think this is more of a playground argument. Nothing we haven't seen before.
Has Company A ever offered any sort of incentives to Company B to NOT sell or buy products by Company C. (Note: I did not say incentives to buy/sell Company A, I said incentives to NOT buy/sell company C.)
If this is the case, the company has committed a crime. If this isn't a crime, then what the fuck is?
Intel's official press release and text of filing(.pdf)
95% of all sigs are made up.
Right, but there are rules about this sort of thing. In Japan, for example, Intel was found guilty of (or admitted to?) giving rebates on Intel processors based on how many AMD processors the OEM was buying. More AMD processors meant the Intel chips cost more. These are precisely the same tactics that MS was sued for, remember, and that slashdotters everywhere bemoan as being the cause of Linux's lack of adoption (whether that is true is a different discussion).
The problem with market forces is that, when unchecked, tend to lead to just one company being a monopoly and having pricing freedom, because it actually kills every competitor.
Here's an example: In the town where I grew up, there was a nice floral shop. Then in came a huge chain supermarket that offered lower prices on cut flowers. After a while, the local mom-and-pop florists died under price pressure. Once they were dead, the supermarket raised its prices on cut flowers.
So what you get is a temporary price reduction while the big company kills the little one. And perhaps whenever it needs to kill a competitor. But most of the time the prices stay high.
Would you really expect Intel to say "Oh, we're sorry that we're monopolists. Please punish us!"
Having a monopoly is not a crime. Using that monopoly unfairly to stamp out competition is the crime. Maybe you meant to write: Would you really expect Intel to say "Oh, we've employed anti-competitive business practices. Please punish us!"
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
I don't know if I actually believe anti-trust laws are a good thing. I mean, let's take a look at the market ... it seemed there wasn't any need for lawsuits.
Yes, because Intel's actions were greatly limited by anti-trust law!
Intel is alleged to have anti-competitive practices by basing their prices to OEMs on how many AMD parts they sold, as a direct financial incentive to not buy AMD, and supposedly several major OEMs caputilated entirely and dropped AMD from their lines. Yay market?
And that's with Intel being afraid of anti-trust action (and I assure you they are). If there were no anti-trust laws, what do you think they would do? Let me give you a hint: Intel makes more profit in a quarter than AMD sees gross revenue. They could easily cut their prices to almost nil and provide whatever cash incentives it took to get OEMs to sign contracts stating they would not buy AMD parts for N years, where N is long enough for any holdouts to feel the pain and long enough for AMD to be unable to pay the upkeep on their fabs.
Once AMD lost its fab, and Intel was the only game in town, how much do you think your precious market would set the price of processors at?
That's extreme, but not impossible, especially back in the days before Athlon when AMD was even smaller and weaker.
Anti-trust laws are there for a very good reason. Free markets are not fair markets, and a company that is vastly larger and has vastly more marketshare and cash than their competitors has a huge advantage regardless of the quality of their processors. Anti-trust is there to put a reasonable restriction on that advantage, such as, oh, not punishing your customers for buying from a competitor.
Those laws being in place are the only reason that great competitive race in the late nineties occured at all. You have to realize that.
The enemies of Democracy are
it's not. AMD Headquarters One AMD Place Sunnyvale, California 94088-3453 (408) 749-4000 They have fabs in Germany, but they're a US company.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Historically, AMD's biggest problem has always been decent supporting hardware (ie: motherboards - in particular, VIA chipsets), especially at the higher end.
Ironically, there are now a lot of kick-arse high end Opteron motherboards available, but much of the market has moved towards many low-powered machines rather than a small number of high powered machines - and there aren't any decent low-end Opteron motherboards (for server use, ie: with multiple PCI buses, or even PCI-X).
It's called tortious interference. Near as I can tell, Intel is guilty as hell. This lawsuit was a long time coming. AMD is now just strong enough that chip customers are willing to take a chance and cooperate with the investigation. If Intel retaliates it won't hurt as much anymore.
No, in Japan, Intel agreed to the Japan Fair Trade Commission's conduct recommendations while rejecting the allegations and the general claim that Intel violated Japanese antitrust laws. Intel admitted to nothing, was found guilty of nothing, and avoided years of wasteful litigation in Japan.
While I rather like AMD, I really can't argue against lower prices. Um, yay intel?
You don't seem to understand how monopolistic pricing works. A typical example is to only offer a rebate if they don't use AMD chips. The post-rebate price is the "take it in the shorts" end user price. The pre-rebate price is the "drive stores carrying AMD out of business" price.
Let me make an example, let's assuming the marketing at Intel has figured out that 500$ is the optimal price point:
Fair play:
Intel chips cost 500$, regardless.
Store A sells 1000 Intel chips
Store B sells 800 Intel chips, 200 AMD chips.
"Rebate":
Intel chips cost 600$ but with 100$ rebate if exclusive.
Store A sells 1500 Intel chips @ 500$
Store B sells 300 Intel chips @ 600$, 200 AMD chips
Store B goes to hell, AMD is pushed out of the market place / to second tier manufacturers, Intel can push prices up higher. It's not a rebate to you, in fact it's not really a rebate at all. It's a penalty to all AMD-carrying stores.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Intel says: "If you buy AMD chips for your notebooks you'll just get a chip. You'll still have to go and part out motherboards, wireless chips, video cards, everything. On the other hand, you go with Intel, we'll give you an integrated motherboard with everything. You get the whole ball of wax from us, cheap! And if you want, you can pay us for a license to the Centrino brand name, too."
That's an incentive to buy Intel. It's also a disincentive against buying AMD. It also sounds like good business sense to me, not any kind of crime
Except that this is not quite the case. Intel's Centrino platform is not completely integrated: it uses a MiniPCI card for wireless, and is required for a platform to carry the Centrino name. The catch? The ONLY MiniPCI card allowed is the Intel Pro/Wireless card.
Manufacturers were very pissed off that they couldn't offer a Pentium M system without
wireless and still sell it under Centrino, let alone provide a different wireless card.
You could get exactly the same level of integration on the AMD side for years (VIA and SiS offered integrated video chipsets for years) for less, with the possibility of including an even better wireless MiniPCI card. But Intel plastered the Centrino name all over the media, basically telling manufacturers that if they ignored Centrino, they would be left behind.
It's not illegal, but it is very underhanded.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.