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Intel Receives Record Fine By the EU
Firefalcon writes "Intel has been fined a record 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion / £948 million) by the European Competition Commission after being found guilty of anti-competitive practices. This makes Microsoft's 497 million euro fine in 2004 (which was a record at the time) seem like a slap on the hand. Reports had previously suggested that the fine would be similar to Microsoft's. Intel was charged (among other things) with encouraging manufacturers and retailers to purchase fewer (or even not stock) AMD processors. More details of the ruling are on the European Commission's Competition website. Intel said they will appeal the fine."
Possibly, but here that would be a drop in the ocean. I wonder if the DOJ will do the same.
1.066 GigaEuros - a number Intel can understand?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Yeah I'm sure the 2 for each EU resident will save the whole continent
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
It's still just a slap on the wrist. They've profited an order of magnitude more from the illegal tactics they used, and this just says "It's ok to break the law, as long as you give us a cut of the profits".
They should at least give a part of the fine to AMD to help them fight Intel -- that would hurt Intel a lot more than paying a fine to EU, and make them think twice before doing this again.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
There's a bit of a difference between offering a volume discount and a discount that specifically hinges on you not purchasing a competitor's products.
I was the Director of Engineering for VLSI Technology's PC Chip set division back in the 80's. Back in those days, there were dozens of companies making chip sets for Intel CPU's and Intel, surprising as it may sound, did not. The chip set business was interesting in that it started with C&T. Zymos was second and VLSI was third. By the time we got into it, and in particular, after we were picked by IBM to be their chip set provider, the bay area VC market must have been swamped with business plans of every dog and his brother wanting to start a chip company making chip sets. If you can remember too, there were hundreds and I do mean hundreds of PC companies. Fast forward a few years. Things are now pretty crazy. VLSI made it to be the top chip set supplier but the competition was intense. The hundreds of PC companies has now fallen to around 10-12. The dozens of chip set companies has fallen to 4 or 5 but still no Intel. This is around the time that the Pentium first made its debut. Now, to make a chip set, you need these very important things called "Yellow Books" ( maybe they were Red.... hmm that was a few years ago) . These are the specifications of the next CPU from a "certain" CPU manufacturer. Without the yellow books, you can't make a chip set because you have no idea what the memory interface is going to look like. If you don't know the memory or peripheral interface you can't make a north bridge for sure and your south bridge is going to be a hack. Soooooo, it was at this time that we were working on our next generation chip set for the Pentium. We were going crazy because, for some very strange reason, we had yet to get the "Yellow Books". We could and did make educated guesses as to what the memory interface should be but we did not know for sure what it would look like. Well you know what? Gee, like magic, Intel announces and samples their Triton chipset. (Which we taught them in large part how to make pursuing a CF called Polar and Draco with Intel, but that is another story.... I digress) And Andy G. tells the press how Intel was just "forced" into making their own chip sets because the external chip set vendors just could not keep up. Oh yea, gee wizzz, we get the specs the same week you sample and yea, we just can't keep up can we. Where it really got interesting is when we got our chipset out and our sales team was trying to sell to our customers, which now as I said is a VERY short list, it seems a certain "I" company was bundling their chip sets with their CPU's. You, as a PC company, "could" buy just CPU's from them for price A or you could buy CPU's + Chip set for price B. I let you guess which was the larger. Oh, yea, and if you selected the A option. They ( the "I" company) could not guarantee delivery.
So, we went from $250M/year in sales to $25M/year in sales in 12 months. Our division was decimated. I have never seen anything, short of last Octobers stock market, fall so hard and so fast.
In retrospect, I don't blame Intel for getting into the chip set business. Hell, I am surprised actually it took them as long as it did but both the tactics they used, and quite frankly, the stupidity of the upper management at VLSI laid waste to an incredible group of people, and at the time, a great place to work. Ah, well. That's competition. It was fun while it lasted.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
2 Euros (why does Slashdot not display the Euro sign correctly when pretty much every other internet forum does?)...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
wow, never saw that coming
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Volume discounting means "buy more and we give you a discount". What they were doing was "don't buy from others and we give you a discount.. you don't even have to buy more from us". There's a very clear difference between that and Sam's Club's discounts.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Without knowing exactly where it goes I can only speculate, but could this fine by so high to help fix European budgets stretched too thin by a weak economy?
No, it would not even be enough to fix the buget of a single EU country, but high enough that intel basically feels a smack on the hand,
besides that the entire thing now goes into revision several times and by the time everything is settled the economy crisis is over.
I think the difference here is that Office Max can't give you a bulk discount contingent on you not buy from staples.
Ex (ok):
Office Max: Pens are $1/ea, but if you buy 100,000+, they are $0.75/ea
Ex (not ok):
Office Max: Pens are $1/ea, but if you buy 100,000+ AND no more than 10% of your purchased inventory comes from our competators, they are $0.75/ea
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Intel's "crime": "'Intel awarded major computer manufacturers rebates on condition that they purchased all or almost all of their supplies, at least in certain defined segments, from Intel.'
This is called "volume discounting". Office Max and Sam's Club are guilty of similar "crimes" and "anticompetitive" behavior, it seems.
You are wrong because a rebate happens after the fact. A volume discount is provided up front. Intel has always provided volume discounts, and still does, and nobody is complaining about that. The complaint is that intel is instead promising to give money if the manufacturer shuns AMD, then delivering the payment. This is similar to Microsoft threatening to raise OEM prices if OEMs bundled certain software or sold machines with other operating systems installed.
The second case is pretty clearly anticompetitive; the first case is, after thinking about it for like two fucking seconds also quite anticompetitive. You're FREE to say "if you buy ten times as many units from me, I'll give you a discount." That's not what's happening here. Instead, it's "I'll give you this great price, but only if you don't buy anything from my competitor." Maybe you think that should be legal, okay. But it's still different from a volume discount.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It must be really worth it for these big companies to risk millions in fines to making competition suffer.
I always wondered if they really make that much more money (after the fine) or if what they really are after is the destruction of the competitor (AMD in this case)...
It was worth it!
I would gladly pay a 1B euro fine every decade or two if that's what it takes to keep the monopoly.
(I'm not expressing an opinion on whether the allegations are true.)
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
It is legal and ethical for a non-monoplistic company to offer volume discounts.
It is NOT legal and NOT legal for the single biggest chip maker to insist you don't buy their competitor's product except in minimalistic amounts.
The differences are
1. Volume discounts are not affected by your purchases from a competitor. They are simple standardized discounts.
2.When you are so big and powerful that your clients literally fill threatened and has no choice but to acccept the terms of your contract, then yes the government DOES get to affect the terms of the contract.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Sounds like a necessary part of business?...
No. This behaviour is anticompetitive. It deprives consumers of choice and the benefits of healthy competition such as lower prices. It is one thing to severely undercut your competitor...that's basic competition and part of free market trading.
However, preventing the competitor from even being considered at consumer level benefits no one but Intel. OEMs are strongarmed, consumers have less choice, competitors go out of business. This is the Monsanto of chip business.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
Sorry to shatter your worldview here, 1 and 2 are not related. The fine is not even close to help out of any recession...
Depends when Intel has to pay for it.
In 2020, this "Record Fine" is probably worth 2 CPUs.
Which is why all these records are meaningless.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
"encouraging manufacturers and retailers to purchase fewer (or even not stock) AMD processors." How could that possibly be illegal?
How about this "In addition to providing rebates to manufacturers that bought almost entirely Intel products, the Commission found that the chipmaker had paid them to postpone or cancel the launch of specific products based on AMD chips."
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Why the odd 60 million tacked on the end? VAT?
Yes. Just like breaking a few legs is a necessary part of running a protection racket.
"The Commission finds that Intel did not compete fairly, frustrating innovation and reducing consumer welfare in the process," Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Competition Policy, said at a Brussels news conference announcing the fine. "Given that Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for over five years, the size of the fine should come as no surprise."
...
...
The violations took place between 2002 and 2007, when Intel controlled at least 70% of the world market for microprocessors, Kroes said.
"Intel awarded major computer manufacturers rebates on condition that they purchased all or almost all of their supplies, at least in certain defined segments, from Intel," the Commission concluded.
The Europeans began their investigation in July 2007, and their findings should help U.S. regulators, said David Balto, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former antitrust official at the FTC and the Department of Justice. He noted that Intel also has been found in violation of antitrust laws by Japan and Korea.
"The relief that the Europeans imposed I think will provide an excellent guide to U.S. enforcers as they try to determine what to do about Intel's exclusionary conduct," Balto said today.
"Their website invites visitors to add their 'vision of tomorrow,' " [Kroes] said. "Well, I can give my vision of tomorrow for Intel here and now: "Obey the law"."
Link.
Good. Very good. They will be selling less of their CPUs and motherboards, and their competition will be selling more.
Now witness the final battle between Captain Obvious and the Mighty Sarcasmo!
I see nothing wrong with it... it is already rather appealing.
The action against Microsoft does not seem to have hindered Microsoft's behavior in the slightest and so even though tremendously more aggressive than the action against Microsoft in the U.S., it was clearly not enough.
It remains to be seen if the action against Intel will be at all effective.
Well played, Sir, well played indeed.
Now do you have any suggestions for drying coffee out of a keyboard?
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
As they've slapped plenty of EU companies with fines for anticompetitive behavior, your accusations are fairly unfounded.
According to the NYTimes article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/global/14compete.html, the fine has to be paid right away. The money is placed in a bank account until further appeals are resolved.
Err, no? And last I checked, it wasn't the case.
I'm not a big supporter of Intel's practices, and a strong opponent of anything Microsoft does, but come the fuck on! Is that money going to be disbursed to AMD for lost business?
No. Why should it? This isn't a civil suit of Intel vs. AMD. Intel is being punished for breaking the law.
EU anti-trust body has become a sick joke.
Why, because they actually do what they're supposed to be doing? You have an odd definition of "sick joke" there.
Step 1. Let companies profit immensely based on illegal and monopolistic practices ...
Step 2. Let said profits become astronomically high and ignore them for years
Step 3. Wait for EU countries to need money very badly
Step 4. Claim some of the companies' money as a fine but not enough money that it's significant to the company
Step 5. Throw a giant PR campaign around the event saying that the EU 'looks out for the people'
Step 6. ??
Step 7. ??
Step. ? Revolution?
It's not even the maximum amount they could have fined them! The max amount is 10% of annual company revenue, for Intel that would be just below 4 billion Euros., since 2008 revenue was 37 billion
And no, they cannot state that paying that fine would bankrupt them, since they have an estimated 10 billion in cash and securities.
Or so states The Financial Times.
"The Commission finds that Intel did not compete fairly"
Not to be too harsh about it, but has ANY company ever really "competed fairly"? It seems to me that if you're playing fair, you're usually not really competing (not in the top tier anyway). Sure, there are great companies like Canonical who are playing fairly in the OS market, for example, but are they really "competing" when the much more cutthroat Apple and MS consistently control 99% of the OS market and shut them out of every mainstream retailer? Sad as it is to say, you almost HAVE to play dirty to "compete" in any real sense. I certainly bet a lot of clean professional athletes must have felt that way when they saw guys like McGwire, Bonds, etc. knocking them out of the park while they struggled.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
the fact that people don't understand where it comes from is more important.
As in, everything sold by intel in effect passes the cost of this judgment to the people buying the product. Since the dollar amount truly is not significant to alter intel's behavior this just becomes and embedded tax.
Really, I see the EU as Dr. Evil making a demand for an amount of money which is meaningless in today's term and Intel's board just laughing it off.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A bit like how the US invaded a Iraq (on false pretenses) causing billions of dollars worth of damage. Brought in US giant companies to rebuild the country and then starting whining about how the rest of the world should contribute to the reconstruction?
Could also be explained something like this...
1. Burn down your neighbours house.
2. Contract your Brother to rebuild it.
3. Get kickback from your brother.
4. Profit!!!
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
(European companies will get a free pass, of course).
Like EDF, Groupement des Cartes Bancaires, or Telekomunikacja Polska and Slovak Telekom are then?
The Anonymous Coward read the article, tears came down his face. "Not my beloved intel!", he cried out loud.
The tears kept coming, he couldn't bare it anymore. The European Union had gone too far this time, the people had to know..
No - it is still tiny compared to the profits Intel makes.
The chip business is dominated by design costs - the manufacturing cost of each chip is relatively small, even for bigh CPUs. So once you have done the design, the return on extra sales is huge. So you don't want to leave out any significant market.
Also, European companies view business in the US as risky because of tort law: if your component is used in something that causes harm, you can get sued to your underwear even if it is misused.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Risky? Courts in the EU are a lot saner than their US counterparts. Don't want to get slapped with antitrust fines? Obey the law. Really. It's not hard. Sell a better product at a lower price, for example.
If I was intel I'd pay my fine and get out.
Good thing you're not Intel. Or running Intel. You would have tried to fix one bad business decision (shady anticompetitive deals) with another really bad business decision (abandoning a significant portion of your market).
Instead, it's "I'll give you this great price, but only if you don't buy anything from my competitor."
But haven't I heard of people becoming the "exclusive" supplier for companies? Isn't this really just a normal business tactic?
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
The EU combined is a bigger market than the US.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
The EU is showing it has some balls to deal with anticompetitive practices.
From my perspective this is good ammo against the Euro-skeptics in my own country. Big multinational companies like Intel couldn't care less about what a EU member state says, but if the EU works together it's a heavy hitter.
Somebody below mentioned that according to the laws of the EU, Intel will have to pay now, and appeal later. Can anyone ascribe some truthiness to this?
From what I understand, the way it was done was subtler than that. "We estimate you need 100k pens, so if you buy 90k+, you buy at discount". "Oh, you need 50k pens? We'll offer a discount starting at 45k purchases". Essentially, they never explicitly say "you can't have more than 10% of your stock in AMD products", but, by tailoring their bulk prices on a per-client base, they effectively achieve the same effect.
How to prevent being fined for anti competative behaviour:
Step 1: Instead of encouraging customers to not buy other vendors products, encourage customers to buy your products.
That wasn't so hard now was it?
I am the lawn!
It's roughly 1/2 of thier last dividend, which puts it into the "won't even make us report one quarter of loss" category.
Precisely... I'm always amazed to see americans say the same each time there is some EU fine to a US company: "they should just leave EU."
Well, as weird as it may sound, the EU GDP is higher than the US GDP. Many countries there have a higher GDP per capita than the US, too.
I hope they do. Apparently the US is doing a shit job to prevent anti competative behaviour like this. It's nice to know the consumer in EU is still worth more than shit. I for one welcome AMD back into the game that Intel stole .
I am the lawn!
Intel currently makes more money in Europe than it does in the US? ...and has more employees outside the US than in it ... it is only nominally a US company?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
1 billion Euros is not "chump change" in any sense. Yes, the total bailouts are ultimately going to go over a trillion Euros, but any time a SINGLE COMPANY is fined even a thousandth of a trillion Euros, that's REAL money. It's kind of sad when we've reached the point where $1.4 billion seems like "chump change."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In this scenario, the EU must take care to ensure that Intel's only other serious competitor, AMD, be given a fair playing field in which to compete. The multi-billion-dollar (trilion-dollar?) computing market ranging from netbooks to tower-stations depends on getting the best processor bang for the Euro.
South korea has already fined intel for the exact same crooked behaviour recently. eu is even late in doing it.
Read radical news here
It's exactly this kind of mentality that creates the problem. Somewhere along the axis of time US corporations felt it was ok to behave in this way. Of course the US haven't done much to prevent this, no trolling, the article speaks for itself not to mention the MS fine also dealt by the EU. If the US wouldn't look the other way just because it's a big corporation we wouldn't have this problem to begin with.
I am the lawn!
Now do you have any suggestions for drying coffee out of a keyboard?
And Commander Cliche checks in.
for you dont know shit about what you are talking. the fine is not to 'force' anything on anyone, its to punish intel because they have BRIBED computer manufacturers so that they would use intel chips and not amd. BRIBE. mark that word. bribe is something that is not allowed in a free competitive market economy.
Read radical news here
But haven't I heard of people becoming the "exclusive" supplier for companies? Isn't this really just a normal business tactic?
It depends; you can be the exclusive supplier if they're simply not buying from anyone else because they have decided your solution is the one to go with. It's pretty hard to actually get caught acting anticompetitively if you're smart, which is why odds are if you're actually hearing about a violation, it's a major one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First, read the actual comments made by Kroes respecting the EU's findings. Your above comments are very wide of the mark.
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/09/241&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
"Every penny counts in balancing the budget." - Obama. No matter. Intel's not going to pay this 1500 million dollar fine. They'll just hire more lawyers and keep dragging it out for several years, and only end-up paying a few million.
I really don't think Obama cares about pennies or balancing the budget. His budget has the largest deficit since 1945. Yay for national debt!
"...Intel said they will appeal the fine...." Intel PAID a leading OEM Manufacturer to delay sales of a new AMD CPU model and offered kickback payments for units sold with Intel chips. Intel deserves to burn in hell! Just shows that Intel must not have faith in their own silicone if they pay to make sure AMDs dont get released by OEMs. The move was DIRTY and bullshit. If I can help it I won't EVER by an Intel based anything. So I guess no Mac for me
And if AMD had the share they deserved back when Athlon 64 was blowing away Intel they would have made more money and had more money for R&D in which case would have likely been able to keep up with Intel. The cause and effect is pretty obvious. That AMD couldn't even give away a million free chips to a computer manufacturer makes it pretty obvious that something was mighty fishy.
They had evidence from emails that these secret deals were occurring and AMD couldn't even give a computer manufacturer a million free chips because Intel would punish them. That's blatantly illegal. So if your argument is that Intel shouldn't have to obey the law, then that argument encourages illegal behavior.
even US antitrust experts say that intel deserves that fine.
the law says they can be fined for 10% of their turnover which was 37+ billion euros.
so intel can consider themselves lucky for not having to pay 3.7B euros or about 5B USD(!!!).
but depending on intels reaction the whole case could be brought up again (since more and more "witnesses" or "intel business partners" are speaking up now) possibly ending in the 5B fine.
best move for intel will be to swallow the fine and keep a low profile in the future. or it will turn out even more expensive.
But then that leads down a very slippery slope to things such as:
Instead of encouraging people to NOT vote for your opposition, encourage them to vote for you!
Think of the loss in ad Revenue, and what on earth will the 24 hour news stations do with all that spare time?
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Don't listen to those morons in the EU, Intel. Come home to the US where we will simply forgive all your sins via nationalization. =)
So it sounds like AMD doesn't get a cut of the EU's Intel fine.
But does the finding of fact in the EU's ruling pave the way for AMD to nail Intel with some kind of civil suit?
Exactly, and when you come to think of it things were going great for AMD. I remember the K6/K6-2 generation that was half the price of Intels chips. While they weren't "as powerful" they damn sure weren't far from it. And for about half the price of Intels chips their prices beat the living shit out of Intel. Then came the Athlon/Duron generation followed by 64 bit architecture. By this time AMD was in the lead, still sticking to their fair pricings. Intel on the other hand of course sought to expand/maintain its business to business activities. Nobody really knew why businesses seemed to always pick Intel, and thus their market share was by far larger than AMD.
I'm no AMD fan, at all. They're a business and I'm a consumer. We're both constantly fighting for gain. I want lower prices and higher quality, they want more revenue. It would be, to put it simply, fucking stupid for me to stand on their side. However when Intel began conducting this type of behaviour it naturally hurts AMDs business, but as I said I couldn't care less about AMD. What I do care about is that I was getting good quality for a low price and due to Intel I'm no longer getting this. So from a consumers point of view: fuck Intel for meddling in my business, not AMDs.
I am the lawn!
It is usually a retail shop that gets an "exclusive" on a product. Meaning that Target has something Walmart doesn't.
It is not a manufacturer supplying Target and Walmart at the exclusion of all other manufacturers. That hurts competition.
The "exclusive" you describe is like "Metal Gear Solid" on the PS3 which is not on the XBOX or WII. There is nothing wrong with that since they are not stopping the building of competitive products.
Somebody below mentioned that according to the laws of the EU, Intel will have to pay now, and appeal later. Can anyone ascribe some truthiness to this?
It has a Truthiness factor of 7.
The enemies of Democracy are
Hrmm... Interesting, interesting. I like it.
And as for veracity?
They must put the funds in escrow until they have settled their final appeals. The float on $1.5 billion is significant, so they are out something regardless of their final verdict. "The company must write a bank guarantee for the fine right away, though that guarantee is held in a bank account until appeals are exhausted, a process that could take years." ref
fsck -u
I don't think you understand the purpose of the question mark?
Only a 2 I'm affraid.
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
Ah, but that's a '2' on the old OOS (Old OOS Scale) scale. In modern terms, that's a 7 as well. Excellent. Gentlemen, we have a consensus factor of 54, with an implied hearsay vector calculated at 1, leaving us free to continue speculating.
I just want to say, "good work, gentlemen". We've cracked it!
Oh noes! Not secret deals! I have news for you, most deals between businesses are "secret" by this standard.
As to illegality, It was clear to me at least that the GP was clearly questioning the validity of the anti-trust laws. One way to challenge a law is by deliberately breaking it. I am not claiming that Intel was making a political statement, but what if they were?
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Role of the gov's should be to maintain even playing field, not to help any single competitor (and what about Via?)
Besides, one could argue that the ones most harmed by those intel practices were consumers, so the fine has a chance to benefit them in one way or another (yeah, yeah, "that will never trickle down from gov's" - but actually, EU is rather good in this regard; I can see tangible improvements around me after joining (quite recent member state))
Also, if intel will have to somewhat raise prices to recoup the fine, AMD benefits (yeah, yeah, "where's the gain for consumers you were talking about?" - in reality, healhy prices are better than too low, unsastainable ones that would allow killing off competition...at which point intel would get back to pricing practices from the 90's)
One that hath name thou can not otter
This is why we can't have nice things.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
The free market is imperfect. Monopolies, imbalance of information, and externalities can all skew the market unfairly, harming both buyers and sellers.
What Intel did was clearly wrong, harmful to the free market, and to society as a whole. Adam Smith himself admitted that markets need regulation in order to remain free. This is one such case.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Her final words on the official EU statement:
Finally, I would like to draw your attention to Intel's latest global advertising campaign which proposes Intel as the "Sponsors of Tomorrow." Their website invites visitors to add their 'vision of tomorrow'. Well, I can give my vision of tomorrow for Intel here and now: "obey the law".
From: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/09/241&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
Go Neelie!
IIRC back when the Athlon 64 was blowing away Intel, AMD had chip shortages.
http://www.crn.com/white-box/193500828
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1014180/unprecedented-demand-for--athlon-64-x2s-prompts-shortage-fear
Hard to make more money when you are out of stock.
In theory AMD could have charged higher, but they had already committed to certain prices, and even if they could at a certain point people would buy Intel. If you have orders for 10000 PCs, and AMD only provides you 5000 CPUs, you have a problem. Worse if they are orders specifically for AMD PCs.
Siemens Market Cap: Ã 45.85 billion Intel Market Cap: Ã 62.26 billion
That's silly. For Intel, CPUs are probably 75% of their revenue. For Siemens, energy distribution is probably like 2-3% of their revenue.
There was more interesting case against 3 major EU-based elevator companies who essentially divided market (refusing customers belonging to competitors' turf) and fixed prices. Since their were engaged in the activities for more than a decade, fine was IIRC 3 times of a year profit. And unfortunately for the companies, the year before the conviction was pretty good financially for all of them.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Or does he!