Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

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Constantine, I'll agree that marketing dollars are responsible for Intel's ASPs, but not for their volumes. At this point, the TAM with and without branding and marketing is going to be close to equal. Intel is mostly focusing on getting existing PC owners to buy Intel, or even better, to transition their desktop system to a higher margin Centrino product.

So if you argue that an entity that controls price should be counted as a cost, then I'd have to disagree. Subtract Intel's marketing, and they'd have to sell CPUs at AMD's prices (or at least lower prices, since the current branding will have some effect going forward), but the *costs* will stay the same.