Chipguy, re: How is Dell going to keep up with HP's 2% growth in x86 server sales unless it matches it with Opteron offerings
too?
Good point. I thought that was about the only weakness though in the HP/Dell earnings + GS report news yesterday.
What do you think the reason is why they're doing so well? I think it's ultimately their pricing which is based on their low cost direct model (plus their untarnished image as low cost enterprise supplier of everything from notebooks to low end servers). If so HP is't able to match the reason why Dell is gaining. Hence they offer Opteron in order to have some differentiation compared with Dell in the standard server market.
Even considering this I think the HP results for standard servers was very disappointing, while DELL's result is beyond good. I don't think it is anywhere likely but I'm neither dismissing the possibility that HP rethinks a lot of it's options. One indication of what they're thinking will be what units they reorganize as result of the losses.
Anyway you're right in that these results will not be likely to pressure Dell materially into offering Opterons. Even worse it even seems to vindicate their Intel only strategy too. And this is unlikely to change untill AMD's dual core product plus an always unlikely coincidental Intel snaffu like e.g. not having a dual core server chip as dual core Opteron competitor in more or less the same timeframe (could happen though; I give it a 40% probability). I also think this was the basis for Ruiz' remark about thinking that Dell would be on board within a year (i.e. start of summer '05).
Kind regards,
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