Replies to post #81621 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Elmer Phud]

mas

You need to read the discussion on the INTC board. The EU is not charging that Intel sold products at below Intel's cost.

Go catch up.

A spokesman for the European Commission said: "The rebates offered by Intel were of such a quantity, of such an amount, that an efficient competitor would be forced to price below cost and we think that would be very bad for competition and bad for consumers who would be buying computers."

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=21633124

[wbmw]

Re: No these are the charges and it's about Intel bribing OEMs not to take AMD products or selling them below (their own) cost products

In terms of these 3 specific charges:

1. Intel has provided substantial rebates to various Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) conditional on them obtaining all or the great majority of their CPU requirements from Intel.
2. in a number of instances, Intel made payments in order to induce an OEM to either delay or cancel the launch of a product line incorporating an AMD-based CPU.
3. in the context of bids against AMD-based products for strategic customers in the server segment of the market, Intel has offered CPUs on average below cost.

The 3rd is easily disproven, since Intel's ASPs are so laughably above manufacturing costs that it will be easy for Intel to disprove this. The 2nd would depend on witness testimony and/or documented discussions through email or recorded conversation, and without hard proof, it can be thrown out. The 1st is probably the most debatable. The EU has stricter guidelines in this form of pricing than the U.S., for example. I expect this will depend on the exact manner in which Intel has proposed the discounts, and whether it can be proven that Intel specifically gave incentives for vendors not to use AMD. Volume discounts, for example, are perfectly legal. Cash incentives for being 100% Intel, on the other hand, are probably not. Intel will have to prove their case for #1, but I think #2 and #3 are more black and white, and will be thrown out with lack of very hard proof.