Re: Now, what is going to prevent Intel from regaining share in desktop, and maintain laptop share?
There are a couple of things to consider -
AMD has been capacity constrained for some time, which has resulted in some pent up demand for their CPUs, and that will be satisified as AMD moves from 1 FAB to 3 FABs over the next couple of quarters.
Intel has been talking about how much better its NGA parts are compared to its current parts, but it will be many quarters before its line is all NGA. Meanwhile, Intel's own marketing has been convincing people that they need an alternative to any of the parts Intel sells today, and that they should also avoid most of the parts Intel will be selling for some of (or most of) the coming year.
Dell has just announced that, by the end of the year, Dells high end server systems will be AMD while the mid range and low end stuff will be Intel based. That's going to drive some users to AMD through the "halo" effect, but the real question begging surprise is that new line is being introduced at the at the end of the year - when NGA server chips will be available and Intel was supposed to be back on top.
Apparently AMD has some better stuff coming than we've been led to expect. The time frame in which Dell has decided to dump Intel for high end servers is the time frame in which NGA server chips are expected to first be widely available. It may be that NGA is either not binning as well as hoped, has been made to look better than it really is through cherry picking benchmarks, or a combination of that and AMD's upcoming stuff is quite a bit better than we'd thought.
