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Is Intel Selling Bay Trail Chips Below Cost?

edxwelch writes "An analyst at Bernstein Research has found that Intel is selling their tablet Bay Trail chips to OEMs below cost, concluding that after end rebates, Intel's tablet revenues are likely to be "close to zero," while profits will be negative. Intel has responded that the 'special costs' Intel is incurring are not pushing down gross margin. Intel needs to offer the subsidies to OEMs building $199-$299 devices to bring the bill of materials down and make them competive with cheaper chips from the likes of MediaTek and Rockchip."

36 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Dice is selling out Slashdot with the Beta by east+coast · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what's the real difference here? The difference is that Intel is selling something of real world value. Dice is destroying something of real world value.

    --
    Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
    1. Re:Dice is selling out Slashdot with the Beta by dmomo · · Score: 4, Informative

      More posts like this. Protest beta with on-topic posts. (bonus points if title is on topic too).

  2. -1 ontopic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fuck Beta is the only thing to say today.

    1. Re:-1 ontopic by DaTrueDave · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I will be joining in the Slashcott from Feb 10-Feb 17. No on-topic replies today!

    2. Re:-1 ontopic by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Former US president (and everyone's favorite funny man) Richard M. Nixon announced his approval of the Slashdot Beta site.

      "I was just telling Pat this morning as I made sweet Nixon love to her that what the web needed was a whitespace-riddled atrocity. Slashdot Beta is the Tet Offensive of discussion sites, so screw you, you stupid hippies."

      Henry Kissinger was said to have been very pleased as well. Dr. Kissinger was quoted as saying "In Soviet Russia, Slashdot betas you!""

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:-1 ontopic by geminidomino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are NOT a paying customer

      Nope. As people are so fond of pointing out, we're the product. Since our displeasure with the new UX-infested abortion obviously, as you so correctly put it, "means squat to Dice," maybe having a bunch of "products" walking off the shelves and out of the store will get their attention.

      Can't speak for the others, but whether or not I walk back onto the shelves on the 18th depends on whether or not they manage to complete the cranio-rectal extraction or not.

    4. Re:-1 ontopic by geminidomino · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Their chief revenue is from ads that are viewed by slashdotters

      It's not just google et al selling our data that makes us "the product." The "customer" is the one who gives them money (the advertisers). What they're getting in exchange is exposure; our "eyeballs", in scumbag speak. Complaints and feedback go ignored, so clearly they don't care whether we like it or not: the theory to be tested by the "Valentine's Day Massacre" is whether they care if we don't like it enough to drop their ad impressions and, subsequently, their revenue.

      Without users, they have nothing to sell.

  3. YUP by TheNastyInThePasty · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Slashdot is officially being actively destroyed because it doesn't make enough advertising revenue anymore

    From the report:

    Slashdot Media was acquired to provide content and services that are important to technology professionals in their everyday work lives and to leverage that reach into the global technology community benefiting user engagement on the Dice.com site. The expected benefits have started to be realized at Dice.com. However, advertising revenue has declined over the past year and there is no improvement expected in the future financial performance of Slashdot Media's underlying advertising business. Therefore, $7.2 million of intangible assets and $6.3 million of goodwill related to Slashdot Media were reduced to zero.

    --
    The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
    1. Re:YUP by ModernGeek · · Score: 2

      One of us needs to buy it from dice and keep it running right. I'm younger than most of you, so I'm not a millionaire yet.

      If I've learned anything from the community here, it's that everyone has their shit figured out and runs their own small business which has at least a million dollars of liquid assets.

      So a few of slashdot's smart asses need to get said asses in gear and preserve this place for the greater good; maybe even make it profitable.

      --
      Sig: I stole this sig.
    2. Re:YUP by blindbat · · Score: 2

      Just wait until after the beta goes permanent live. Slashdot will be available for pennies on the dollar.

    3. Re:YUP by afidel · · Score: 2

      No need to be a millionaire, you should be able to buy it for a couple bucks since they already wrote down the value to zero.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  4. Editors are scared by TWiTfan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks like they're using their unlimited mod points to try to downmod everyone who posts on the beta.

    --
    The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
    1. Re:Editors are scared by dmbasso · · Score: 2

      Yep, I noticed that. In a technology oriented site they could at least try to hide the blatantly obvious statistical anomaly. A small script with some randomness and delays would be enough.

      --
      `echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
    2. Re:Editors are scared by dmomo · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's OK. What made slashdot great is the people who love it, leaving insightful comments. Since they are currently only leaving comments related to beta... if you mod those down, there won't be much of a discussion left.

      If they do manage to suppress the beta "noise", just bring it to their facebook page.

  5. Intel's profit methods by grommit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Intel has been doing this for a long time. They know how to make money off of it. Dice Holdings on the other hand only seems to know how to ignore their readers and create a "BETA" website that is flat out painful to read.

  6. Dice has written off Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The editors are getting involved by modding down the "fuck beta stuff", but only this comment went from +5 to -1: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760775&cid=46174399

    I think we have hit on what is really going on. Slashdot is being killed so that the brand can be re-purposed.

    1. Re:Dice has written off Slashdot by Belial6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds like the opportunity for a huge win for Commander Taco.

      1) Make Slashdot a popular site.
      2) Sell Slashdot for lots of money
      3) Wait for new owners to kill Slashdot
      4) Make new Slashdot site with different name
      5) Wait for everyone to switch to new site
      6) Sell new site for lots of money
      7) Profit!!!

  7. Re:FTC issue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    SLASHBETA - A violation of human dignity.

    DOWN WITH BETA

  8. Boycott by chebucto · · Score: 5, Informative

    Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.

    On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.

    Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

    If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.

    We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
    We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott

    Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
    Commentors - only discuss Beta http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

    Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

    Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
    Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
    Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org

    --
    The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
  9. Fuck Beta by sexconker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The day I lose access to the classic version of Slashdot is the day I block slashdot.org at the border.
    Your move, Dice.

  10. I don't always comment, but when I do... by coastal984 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I say, Fuck Beta! Holy hell this is terrible.

  11. Regarding the fucking beta by gman003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not a guy who blindly follows what he's used to. When I got Windows 8, I gave Metro a try. It has some good parts, and I don't even dislike the look of it. I could have adapted to the inconsistencies, and the weird tabletness of it all. But after trying dozens of apps, I found that none of them worked as well as the desktop applications.

    I like to think I'm a guy who does what works. Metro didn't work, so I no longer use it. I got a program that gives me a start menu back, and it lets me configure it to be even better-fitted to my needs than the stock W7 menu.

    I gave Slashdot Beta a try, because I thought it deserved a chance. Perhaps all the hate for it was just small-minded traditionalists clinging on to the familiar. But no. Slashdot Beta breaks all the important functionality, and it makes it look worse. If it goes live as it currently is, not only am I quitting Slashdot for good, but I'll be throwing a proposal to my bosses about making a competitor, because the market for an audience-focused tech site will be wide open (I'm currently contemplating "Alpha" as a name).

    Slashdot Classic has problems, certainly. Unicode is broken, HTML comments are stupid, the design isn't that great, and since the thing is still running on Perl I'm sure there's some hindrances to continued development. Slashdot needs a rewrite, a clean new technical foundation powering a new front-end design.

    But Beta isn't it. With all the problems Classic has, Beta is a million times worse. I can't think of even one way in which Beta is superior - it is a step down on all fronts, obviously designed by people who never used Slashdot and only copied from other news sites and comment forums.

    1. Re:Regarding the fucking beta by afidel · · Score: 2

      Agreed, I went to beta on day one after being a mobile beta participant and what I saw horrified me. I wrote a very detailed writeup about what was wrong with the design and even gave them the tweaks I had made to their CSS using Tampermonkey to make the site less annoying, and yet absolutely nothing of substance changed between when I wrote them and when they foisted it on the larger population. Why the hell am I being asked to give feedback if you're not going to take any of it seriously?

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  12. Fuck Slashdot Beta Fuck Dice by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Fuck Slashdot Beta Fuck Dice

    Fuck Slashdot Beta Fuck Dice

    Fuck Slashdot Beta Fuck Dice

  13. Predatory pricing by TheloniousToady · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm surprised no one has complained to the ITC yet if they are effectively "dumping" these chip.

    I thought about that too, but I don't think it applies in this case. I think it's allowable to sell things below cost if you're not a dominant player. In fact, temporarily losing money on a product when entering a market is a common tactic to gain market share. This is distinct from predatory pricing, which is intended to force competitors out of the market. You would need to be a dominant player to do that, which Intel clearly isn't in the mobile space.

  14. Re:We'll go aggressively passive-aggressive then by meta-monkey · · Score: 3, Funny
    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  15. For the first time by LookIntoTheFuture · · Score: 4, Interesting

    in Slashdot history, comments about the story are the ones that are offtopic. They may not be modded that way, but I find myself skipping them. Is it really that difficult to keep classic in addition to beta? You have a lot of loyal, intelligent people here. Why give them the finger?

    --
    Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
    1. Re:For the first time by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      Look up "Dice Holding Slashdot writedown" and you'll find your answer. Dice thought they could load the place with Slashvertisements, make money off the articles AND the ads, and instead put the site into a nosedive so bad its now totally unprofitable, so much so they took a massive writedown on it.

      So what does that have to do with the beta fucking? Simple Dice Holdings believes that Slashdot as a NAME could be worth something but not as a site so they are just gonna take a Gawker style layout (hell they might as well even have "powered by Disqus" at the top of the comment section, its such a ripoff) and simply bolt on the Slashdot name, simple as that.

      Will the Slashcott work? No, even though I will be participating on GP the fact is they don't want the USERS, they want the BRAND. Like most retarded corps they don't know what has value, they think that just having the name Slashdot is the value when in reality nobody gave a shit what it was called, they came for all the insider comments and those will all be going to Alt (or whatever they call it) but again this doesn't matter to Dice as they think they can make another Fark with the Slashdot name.

      Will it work? Possibly, they can get in the 20 somethings that vaguely remember the /. name and actually like the "ZOMFG look at my Vlog bro!" layout but I seriously doubt it'll get them what they originally wanted, which was a way to get paid for Slashvertisements while getting paid for ads too. most likely it will linger and falter before finally going the way of geocities, just another place from "back in the day" that was bought and trashed by a corp that didn't know WTF made the place what it was.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  16. NO to Beta by mccotter · · Score: 2

    Do not make beta mandatory. Keep classic. I've been looking for an excuse to stop spending time on this site.... and beta is it.

  17. Re:fuckbeta in your favorite language. by MachineShedFred · · Score: 2


    use strict;
    my $slashdot = shift;

    while($slashdot =~ /[Bb]eta/ ) {
              print "Fuck Beta\n";
    }

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  18. Re:Didn't this get them in trouble before? by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, but Intel is an American corporation which only manufactures outside of the USA

    Pure B.S.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  19. FUCK BETA by vivek7006 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FUCK BETA. I want my classic back. And one more thing, FUCK BETA!

  20. First Time for Bad Karma; Expect More by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been posting here for years. I always try to be polite, even in disagreement. Accordingly, I have never been downmodded, except in a few cases of clear disagreement (i.e. a controversial topic gets "overrated", etc) and in most of those I generally get moved back to my starting score of 2 by others. I'm always at karma cap. Again, I ascribe this to the fact that the comments of someone who tries to be polite are generally not rejected by the community.

    All this is to say that today is a first. I corrected a link to a comment by an AC here making it easier for folks to follow his intended direction to this project. When I did this, my comment was downmodded OT into oblivion.

    I don't claim to know who's doing this OT downmodding, but if even my little comment (which was on topic for its GP) was downmodded then we should expect it to continue. Your comments may no longer be welcome on Slashdot.

  21. Re: Desperation ... by kenh · · Score: 3, Informative

    The chips in question, quad-core Atoms (AKA Bay Trail), are actually quite good - I have a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet with that CPU and it runs Windows 8.1 quite well, with very useful battery life (IMHO)...

    I think their strategy is to get the products in user's hands to overcome negative impressions from earlier Netbook/mobile offerings from Intel.

    --
    Ken
  22. Re:Didn't this get them in trouble before? by overshoot · · Score: 2

    You can read "only manufactures outside the USA" as either "the only place its manufacturing occurs is outside the USA" or as "manufacturing is the only thing that it does outside of the USA." Which makes sense in the context of the following three sentences?

    Hint: I live in the Phoenix area and used to work in Chandler. You don't need to tell me that Intel has fabs (and design, etc.) in the USA.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  23. Bad Attitude by Lord_Jeremy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Please, there's way more to say today.

    The "fuck beta" obsession is actually making reading slashdot far more unpleasant for me than the Beta layout. A lot of people here are saying that the site leadership is totally ignoring the opinions of the community. Did any of you actually use the beta and the mobile site back in October when they initially solicited feedback? They were practically unusable, and Beta has definitely become much more pleasant to use by this point. That means that someone is listening and taking feedback into account.

    Note that "fuck beta" is entirely useless feedback. The layout is going to change, there's no preventing it. Slashdot has invested a great deal of developer man-hours (aka: money) into updating the site. So lets provide useful feedback and constructive criticism. I for one am much happier with the performance of Slashdot on mobile platforms. The layout is actually responsive now, and it's much easier to browse through stories on a 3.5" screen. There are still some styles issues, notably the story titles typeface is awkward and the comments sections get unreadably squashed at times. As a matter of personal taste I dislike seeing so much empty off-white space everywhere, but a lot of UI design in general has gone in that direction for some reason.

    The bottom line is this: A goddamn visual redesign of the site does not constitute an effort to kill the community. A lot of the anti-Beta noise is borderline paranoid about that. The submission system isn't changing. The commenting and moderation system isn't changing. The mechanics of being part of the slashdot community isn't changing. Hell there's pretty much exactly the same ad space on the new site as the old one. Let's all try to be reasonable and constructive. Less of the "fuck beta" more of the "I want it to do X instead"