Posts tagged with Intel antitrust
Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 9:46 AM
(25 votes, average: 4.08 out of 5)
Loading ...Craning my head to peer over the giant wave of debate and dialogue washing across the tech landscape with last week’s antitrust ruling against Intel in Europe, I thought it might be helpful to reiterate what AMD seeks in the wake of this third straight antitrust ruling against Intel. Simply stated:
We want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to prevail because the truth is on AMD’s side.
What if you were knee-capped?
As we said from the beginning, we do not seek special treatment from competition regulators in any way, shape or form. We crave a fair fight. If the other guy tries to injure you, preventing you from making it onto the field of play, that doesn’t strike me as fair (or legal).
I don’t recall anyone ever blaming Nancy Kerrigan for getting assaulted with a metal club by those who wanted to put an end to a level playing field in Olympic skating. Should Nancy have just accepted her clubbing as something that “goes with the territory” in an ultra-competitive endeavor, as some seem to indicate AMD should? Did Nancy demand special treatment when she went to the authorities? You know the answers already. As the victim, of course Nancy wasn’t seeking special treatment at all. She sought justice, pure and simple.
We may not have had our knees bashed in with a metal pipe, but AMD was no less injured in a business sense, and we are entitled to seek justice for that. Joe consumer was robbed of a full spectrum of marketplace choice by Intel. Sadly we cannot go back in time and undo the damage that was done to our business, and we will never know what the state of play may have been today if not for Intel’s monopoly abuses.
Was there a cover-up?
One thing that was found by European investigators that appears to have gone under-reported is that Intel apparently went to “great lengths to cover up its anti-competitive actions“. Let me ask you this: If Intel truly believes that it has done nothing wrong why would they go out of their way to deliberately hide evidence? What’s the truth?
Obama, the innovators and the entrepreneurs
I’ve also seen speculative pieces regarding the Obama administration’s apparent get-tough stance on antitrust, and what that may mean for Silicon Valley. I argue that any fear and loathing about what might come to pass is premature, and also misplaced. Am I an expert in this field? No. But as a technologist working for a company that innovates on the bleeding edge, do I have an informed opinion? Yes.
Only time will tell how much the Obama administration is able to help protect the economically suffering American consumer through encouraging vibrant competition. But I can say today with confidence that rather than fear or fight the change that is coming, I would encourage entrepreneurs to embrace it – because I am convinced that robust antitrust enforcement is the innovator’s best friend; perhaps the only friend they have in the dog-eat-dog world of the high tech industry.
Sane innovators and entrepreneurs will only expend the vast amounts of monetary and intellectual capital necessary to bring competitive products to the marketplace if they have a reasonable expectation of a fair return on their investment. In other words, a fair fight.
Look at it from the other side- who in their right mind would dedicate the time, money, and everything else that goes along with a bet-the-business proposition if they knew going into it that their business’ world-beating product was most likely to be taken, boxed-up, and relegated to the top shelf in vast warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant. The answer, of course, is no one.
My humble request
So if you really love technology and what it can do for people the way I do, I urge you to support any effort that gives innovators – both large and small – the confidence to create. Let these independent investigations into Intel’s business practices play out and let the truth speak for itself. Japanese, Korean and now European competition investigators don’t have any skin in the AMD versus Intel technology game. They don’t care about us. They don’t prefer gaming on either an AMD rig or an Intel rig. All they care about is how the facts line up with their rule of law, in an effort to protect consumers.
And by that measure, Intel is “0 for 3″. As one prominent legal reporter so succinctly put it, “Even before this palpable pendulum shift, Intel’s legal arguments looked dicey. Now they’re beginning to look far-fetched.”
So what do you think? Let me know and leave a comment and I will respond.
Are You Being Duped by the Intel Innovation Spin?
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 9:29 AM
(24 votes, average: 4.42 out of 5)The EU ruling against Intel was an exciting day for consumers and the entire technology ecosystem. For my part, I spent the day giving press interviews and interacting with the Community over Facebook, Twitter and various tech site boards. Based on all these conversations, there was one common thread I feel I must address and examine. Unfortunately but understandably, it’s based on an argument that serves Intel’s world view.
The Intel World View
“AMD needs to innovate, not litigate.” Also worded as, “When AMD has a product lead, it gains all the share it deserves.”
Here’s the way even my friend Kyle Bennett of HardOCP expressed it on Twitter:
Kyle’s primary audience who we love is the PC hardware enthusiast where small differences in performance may seem dramatic (as in, a car that goes zero to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds is 9 percent slower than one that does it in 5.0 seconds flat. Both are damn fast, but the discussion is focused on the 9 percent), it’s understandable that he would imply that all AMD is missing is “better processors”. But I can’t help but point out and appreciate that Kyle’s well-respected site Hard OCP has issued awards to AMD for both our AMD PhenomTM II processor and ATI RadeonTM HD 4000 Series graphics in the last 6 weeks alone – our hardware enthusiast products.
With others, the discussion goes like this: “Those who have the most competitive products gain share, those who don’t lose share.” All things equal this could be true, but when there is law-breaking, and as the European Commission put it: “exclusive payments” and “pay to delay” tactics, the equation gets thrown out the window.
The Reality
This ruling from the European Union makes it clear that it doesn’t matter how much innovation AMD pours into its products. The better positioned the product, the more Intel uses its overwhelming position to illegally block or wholly shutdown customer segments and sales channels to AMD. The rewards AMD reaps from having clearly superior or differentiated products is broken into fractions of what they should be through Intel’s behavior. A healthy competitive environment should allow AMD to hone its focus and R&D spend to design and develop future innovative products and platforms, rather than distracting dollar and human resources into fighting Intel’s monopolistic practices.
But now let’s even put that aside.
Others new to this debate may ask: Even with Intel illegal behavior, does AMD have great products and technologies?
Standout Product Innovations So Far in 2009
In 2009 alone, AMD has introduced the world’s first 40nm and the world’s first 1 GHz graphics processors, created the affordable ultrathin notebook category, delivered a world-record setting desktop PC platform, and introduced the most energy-efficient quad-core server processor in our history. We feel these innovations stand tall in the industry, and have real value for their intended customer segments.
Let me provide another recent example in the notebook space where I believe AMD has earned the right to claim “most competitive product”. Please, if you disagree, please let me know in the comments section and I will respond.
AMD creates the affordable ultrathin technology platform
If you recall, as the world fell in love with netbooks last year, we asked the question, “is this the best the industry can offer”? Would consumers want a full PC experience with HD video, Blu-ray, larger display, and ability to play games… by spending a few more bucks? Well, yes. AMD’s platform technology for ultrathin notebooks codename “Yukon” was born and materialized with the award winning and game-changing HP Pavilion dv2 ultrathin notebook. What did others say?
BusinessWeek: “The bottom line for mobility-minded buyers is that the need to choose between expensive executive ultralights and cheap but underpowered netbooks is nearly over.”
Tech Report: “Compared to the average Eee PC, the dv2 packs two thirds more
desktop area, double the hard drive capacity, four times the memory,
a faster CPU, and dramatically better graphics…and it allows the system to do things most netbooks can’t, such as play many recent games and high-definition video, including Blu-ray movies.”
If these appear cherry-picked then here are a full page of accolades on the HP dv2.
Hopefully this example in the notebook space shows that AMD has great products and others are saying it too. We’re creating product categories of unquestioned value to the consumer, Keep in mind, this is true even with Intel’s abusive monopolist practices determined by the EU. I ask you to reject the line of thinking and spin Intel would like you to believe. Do you agree/disagree? Let’s chat.
EU Decision and the Secret Sauce in Innovation
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 12:32 PM
I’m still coming to terms with today’s news from Brussels. Wow. I encourage you to read Nigel’s assessment which details how the fallout from Intel’s third straight conviction by government watchdogs comes down to three issues: price, innovation and choice. If you love technology and what it can do for people the way I do, perhaps the most exciting thing to emerge from yesterday’s ruling is the huge potential for a step change in the pace of innovation. Why?
I believe competition is the “secret sauce” that drives innovation. That’s true in any industry, and it’s also true in life. Would the U.S. have put a man on the moon if not for Sputnik? Maybe, but there’s no question that the Space Race and attending accelerated pace of innovationwas fueled by very high stakes competition between the US and the former Soviet Union.
Goliath with brass knuckles
At AMD we live to compete and innovate, and it starts by asking questions like “What will it take to deliver the next-generation computing experience?” And while innovation with impact is our calling card, it’s more than fair to say that AMD also loves a good fight. But hopefully the world now knows that we’ve fight an enormous opponent that rigs the game to ensure AMD can never fully win fair and square.
Like Nigel said, competition investigators have for a third time (Japan, Korea, European Union) collected evidence showing that especially when AMD opens commanding product leads on Intel and we take those innovations to the marketplace, Intel uses bribery and coercive tactics to block those innovations. Whole AMD customer segments and sales channels are effectively shutdown by Intel.That’s Don Corleone type stuff, folks. That’s David versus Goliath, with Goliath packing brass knuckles on one hand and a brick-filled sock in the other.
The AMD Critic: “AMD should innovate, not litigate”
I’ve heard the Intel apologists say: “AMD should innovate instead of litigate.” If you doubt we fear an innovation fight with Intel or that we can truly compete with Intel, remember that we have proven that we can out-innovate or remain competitive against Intel, a company with about 10x the resources. We are champing at the bit to attack an open, competitive marketplace that is no longer artificially manipulated by Goliath.
You may be sitting there saying, “OK Pat – that’s your opinion, and a biased opinion at that!” Fair enough. If that was opinion, here are 10 facts that should do some of the talking for AMD in terms of theinnovation chops we have under our roof:
Fact #1
Billions of financial transactions are conducted quickly and efficiently every day by major stock exchanges around the world on AMD-based servers.
Fact #2
All 50 Million Wii gaming consoles shipped to date run on AMD technology (ATI Hollywood GPU).
Fact #3
7 of the 10 fastest supercomputers in the world are powered by AMD processors.
Fact #4
AMD processors were trusted to power crash safety test simulations for almost 2 million new cars that hit the road in the US in 2008.
Fact #5
Realistic special effects powered by AMD technology have helped Hollywood amass more than $5.4 billion in worldwide box office revenue.
Fact #6
AMD processors in the Top500 supercomputer list account for more than 4.029 petaflops of computing power (that’s more than four thousand trillion calculations per second).
Fact #7
50% of Internet DNS traffic is efficiently and quickly routed via AMD-powered servers.
Fact #8
Musicians and producers who have collectively won 70 Grammy awards currently rely on AMD technology for their cutting edge digital music production.
Fact #9
Every month nearly 23 million travelers find their ideal trip using online travel services powered by AMD-based hardware.
Fact #10
AMD graphics and slot machine are a winning combination. More than 75% of new slot machines in Vegas use AMD graphics to power their visually stunning imagery, and more than half of those machines also use an AMD CPU.
So to borrow from our corporate philosophy, I’m more than happy to combine these facts with our employees’ passion for innovation. And I’ve never felt better about the future of innovation than I do today. What do you think?
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.