Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[bobs10]

You...

I think it's a little premature to write off the holiday PC season on 11/9. Consumers have been trained to put off technology buys until the last minute as PC prices always seem to drop overnight while the platforms keep improving.

Me...

Yeah, I didn't mind Toshiba having slow sales, what I couldn't understand was Acer. Given Acer's involvement with Turion I would have expected sales to be doing quite well. But as usual there's probably more to it than what the story implies.

The Apple sales gains part of the story was the most significant revelation and confirms what others are saying. Also the bit about DELL being hurt rings true, especially in light of the actions being taken to sell AMD processors. Also the rush by DELL to introduce high-end game PCs that no self-respecting gamer will buy reeks of desperation.

What we need to figure out is whether this is just an INTC /DELL slow market or whether it extends to AMD also. On the one hand we keep getting these booming Taiwan mobo sales reports, and on the other we get these slowing U.S. sales reports. Perhaps the 2 can be reconciled by the time differences in which both events happened? Right now things look a little confused.

One thing worth remembering is that U.S. consumer sales are only a small part of total AMD sales so even if U.S. consumers slow down it might not amount to much in the big picture. AMD now has a much more diversified product line and customer base than it used to.

Right now I'm still thinking AMD is going to have a very good quarter and INTC is going to end up with a lot more inventory. If so we should soon start to hear about big price reductions on INTC products.