Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

I_banker, mmoy, Duron has been a rolling failure as a product in the marketplace. It never achieved low cost of manufacturing to compete head on with Celeron and has been a continual money-loser. There is good reason to abandon that name. I think Marketing 101 dictates that you don't persist in marketing a brand which has been rejected by the market, rather you move on.

Sempron will do fine as a name as long as the underlying product is attractive. If the underlying product should turn out to be uncompetitive then the name won't matter.

From a branding standpoint for the product line, AMD wants to associate the -on suffix with their products: Opteron, Athlon, Sempron. Boring, but it does not matter. What matters is the product and the marketing campaign - and there is a lot more to a marketing campaign than the name.