AMD Faces the Day After New Centrino
With Intel's fourth-generation Centrino platform formally launched Wednesday, and computer manufacturers climbing over each other to get Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro notebook PCs out the door, where does that leave Intel archrival AMD?
It leaves AMD protecting its turf in consumer notebooks, according to Steve Kleynhaus, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner. "With this release," he said, "Intel stays on top in corporate notebooks. AMD has had a hard time cracking that market because Centrino has been pretty strong there, and it's been that way since it was originally released in 2003."
In the business sector, he noted, characteristics such as performance, battery life, and administration -- all emphasized in the Centrino Pro platform -- make a difference in purchasing decisions. But AMD, he said, "is more competitive in the consumer notebook space. They've generally had a better price point, and they'll have to continue to sell competitively."
'A Few Check Marks'
Another Gartner analyst, Martin Reynolds, agreed that AMD's challenge at this point is "not the high-end business model" but guarding against Intel's possible moves further into the consumer market.
Both analysts noted that consumers are less concerned about such factors as battery life, which are critical to, say, on-the-go salespeople, and more about features. "The typical mainstream consumer doesn't care about the processor" or the chipset, Kleynhaus noted, except to the extent that the "chipset and processor performance change the feature set."
Consumers, Kleynhaus said, are generally looking for "a few check marks in features and a price point."
Intel has been pointing out that its new consumer-oriented Centrino Duo can provide up to twice the performance when doing processing-intensive tasks compared to the previous generation, and can deliver up to five times better wireless performance.
With Santa Rosa, Reynolds said, "Intel still holds its high ground and becomes more aggressive in the middle ground," the consumer area, where AMD has been more price-competitive.
More Flexibility in Pricing
Reynolds also said that AMD has more flexibility in pricing than Intel does, "because people are used to AMD sometimes losing money. They don't have to show the profits that Intel does."
But Intel's "tick-tock" strategy has hurt AMD, he said. "Tick-tock" is Intel's stated strategy of having enhanced chip performance one year, followed by a new micro-architecture the next. Before "tick-tock," he noted, cycles were on a three or four year basis, but the new pace plays to Intel's favor as the larger company.
However, Intel's size also can be a disadvantage. As with many large organizations, big size can mean slow-moving, and slow-moving in the chip world can be fatal. Reynolds noted that the innovative Core 2 Duo processor line itself initially emerged from Intel's Israeli branch, which at the time was largely operating separately from the main business.
"But where is AMD's next architecture coming from?" he asked. It's not Barcelona, he said, referring not to an AMD branch in that Spanish city, but to the family of 65-nm quad-core processors that AMD is planning to release later this year.
It leaves AMD protecting its turf in consumer notebooks, according to Steve Kleynhaus, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner. "With this release," he said, "Intel stays on top in corporate notebooks. AMD has had a hard time cracking that market because Centrino has been pretty strong there, and it's been that way since it was originally released in 2003."
In the business sector, he noted, characteristics such as performance, battery life, and administration -- all emphasized in the Centrino Pro platform -- make a difference in purchasing decisions. But AMD, he said, "is more competitive in the consumer notebook space. They've generally had a better price point, and they'll have to continue to sell competitively."
'A Few Check Marks'
Another Gartner analyst, Martin Reynolds, agreed that AMD's challenge at this point is "not the high-end business model" but guarding against Intel's possible moves further into the consumer market.
Both analysts noted that consumers are less concerned about such factors as battery life, which are critical to, say, on-the-go salespeople, and more about features. "The typical mainstream consumer doesn't care about the processor" or the chipset, Kleynhaus noted, except to the extent that the "chipset and processor performance change the feature set."
Consumers, Kleynhaus said, are generally looking for "a few check marks in features and a price point."
Intel has been pointing out that its new consumer-oriented Centrino Duo can provide up to twice the performance when doing processing-intensive tasks compared to the previous generation, and can deliver up to five times better wireless performance.
With Santa Rosa, Reynolds said, "Intel still holds its high ground and becomes more aggressive in the middle ground," the consumer area, where AMD has been more price-competitive.
More Flexibility in Pricing
Reynolds also said that AMD has more flexibility in pricing than Intel does, "because people are used to AMD sometimes losing money. They don't have to show the profits that Intel does."
But Intel's "tick-tock" strategy has hurt AMD, he said. "Tick-tock" is Intel's stated strategy of having enhanced chip performance one year, followed by a new micro-architecture the next. Before "tick-tock," he noted, cycles were on a three or four year basis, but the new pace plays to Intel's favor as the larger company.
However, Intel's size also can be a disadvantage. As with many large organizations, big size can mean slow-moving, and slow-moving in the chip world can be fatal. Reynolds noted that the innovative Core 2 Duo processor line itself initially emerged from Intel's Israeli branch, which at the time was largely operating separately from the main business.
"But where is AMD's next architecture coming from?" he asked. It's not Barcelona, he said, referring not to an AMD branch in that Spanish city, but to the family of 65-nm quad-core processors that AMD is planning to release later this year.
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