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AMD 50% At Dell in 2007
A reader writes: "Reports from Taiwan chipmakers indicate that AMD may make a very large percentage of Dell's sales this year." AMD, of course, has made no comments in regard to this; but if the reports are correct, then it's another setback for Intel in the server market.
So there was no article but I found this online that I think I had caught on Digg once (can I say that here?).
Anyway, this all goes back to our friends IDC who have this knack for claiming to be the industry experts in everything. I don't really buy that but they make these reports and then the article gets published and Slashdot usually caries them. In the particular link above, they estimate that 55 million CPUs will be used by Dell in 2007 and that, according to Taiwanese chipmakers, 20 million of them will be AMD chips. So that comes to a little over a third, not half if those estimates are accurate.
Hemos, I know you're pissed because you have to edit Slashdot on labor day weekend but hang in there champ. You forgot a department on the last story and a link on this one but you'll get the next one right, I'm sure of it!
My work here is dung.
... their sales will explode! ;-)
I'm sure this number was yanked out of the ass of some analyst somewhere, but last I checked Woodcrest is still faster than Rev F for 98% of the applications out there. Intel is doing a full court press from a sales perspective with their teams out there and are going to introduce quad core by the end of the year.
What makes someone think Dell can flip 50% of it's business to AMD? The best way Dell can do anything is to drop the price. I don't think AMD is in the position to want to go into a price war just yet...
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
IBM, HP, and Sun are all beating Dell in the server market. They all offer two things that Dell doesn't
1. AMD servers.
2. A server upgrade path beyond the X86.
I think the last one is over looked. If you need big iron IBM can provide a Power based solution, Sun can upgrade you to an Ultrasparc based server, and even HP has the Integrity and Superdome lines.
The other thing that IBM, HP, and Sun offer is real Linux and Unix support. IBM is heavy into Linux now and still is actively developing AIX, Sun has Solaris and more than a few FOSS projects going on, and HP has good support for Linux and not one but Two versions of Unix.
The difference is Dell sells boxes, IBM, HP, and Sun are computer companies.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I before you start calling your dell rep for details, or your broker to buy stock. Just remember one thing. Dell has been rumoring this for YEARS and they still aren't seriously carrying AMD products. They like to use this to try and negotiate the best possible deal from Intel. Incorporating AMD would in theorey be easy to do, but integrating it into its supply line would take some time... plus dell would have to pour marketing dollars in to make customers feel comfortable with the change (think of the experience with coca-cola classic and coke II).
Personally (and off topic), I would love to see this happen. But don't count on it any time soon.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
If Dell took AMD seriously in 2006 that would have happened, but not so sure about 2007..
Same with IBM, both only just now really started taking AMD seriously and did so just in time for Woodcrest to come and tip price-performance back to Intel systems. AMD still has the memory performance advantage, but Woodcrest/Conroe's 4 ops per clock and relatively aggressive pricing mean AMD has to do something. I don't know AMD's schedule for quad-core offhand, but know Intel Clovertown is supposed to be probably 2nd quarter of 07. It's possible that in going to quad-core Intel's memory architecture could choke them and give AMD a more thorough advantage, or that AMD also gets similar performance while going to quad-core as Intel gets with Woodcrest/Conroe and the scales tip to AMD again.
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