Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

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Is AMD finally starting to lose its marbles?

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1808/

Jul 21, 2005, 07:30 AM

By: Sander Sassen

I’m sure you noticed that AMD is going forward with their lawsuit against Intel where they claim that they’re being hampered in business by unfair business practices on Intel’s part. Many 3rd parties have been subpoenaed to disclose details of business deals made with Intel in an attempt to find proof for AMD’s claims. But aren’t they betting on the wrong horse here? Will getting proof of unfair business practices suddenly improve sales for AMD? I’m sure it wouldn’t as these sales are still dominated by the basic principles of price, availability and performance regardless of Intel’s business ethics. AMD will still need to be able to meet the price and volume requirements of their prospective clients regardless of the court’s ruling in this case.

From that perspective it is odd to see AMD complain about sales of their self advocated clearly superior product when they fail to address the key aspect of selling a product which is creating a strong demand for it. They make fruitless attempts at this every now and then by sponsoring sport events or more recently Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. Does this get the message across that AMD has a superior product at a lower price? No, it doesn’t, it just makes the public aware of another company that makes computer parts, but doesn’t specify how these relate to Intel’s or those of another manufacturer, or even what product specifically.

But there’s more, as AMD fails to tap into another channel that could help them out tremendously, a channel which Intel uses to aid them in getting the public informed about their new products. So what am I referring to here? Simply the fact that AMD consistently fails to provide the press with information or samples of their new products. There’s a selected few publications that receive information and samples on a regular basis, most of which will guarantee a favorable review such as the defacto AMD fansites. From my perspective the small investment associated with sending out a few hundred samples to all assorted online and printed press is a far more effective method of getting better exposure.

We can relate from personal experience that AMD, and its press agencies, do very little if anything at all to promote their product. Only a handful of samples get sent out, no pre-launch information is distributed widely and the general public is kept uninformed of the strides AMD has made with their processor architecture. But matters get worse, as even when asked for samples, pre-launch info, or a simple request to be kept in the loop AMD simply ignores these requests and fails to pick up on this opportunity. We’ve been trying to acquire samples, as have others, for every new processor that was launched in the past two years and have never been sent anything in time and in most cases did not even get a reply to our emails or phone calls, hence no reviews of these processors were posted. So before AMD tries to work the legal end of the matter they seriously need to beef up on their marketing skills, as those are severely lacking.

Sander Sassen.