Replies to post #17041 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[Elmer Phud]

Keith

I agree with you that the whole thing has been a grab for mindshare but my main point was the remarkable immaturity of AMD management with their trash talking and sour grapes whining. Intel has passed on every opportunity to act in like kind. Those are both messages that will not fall on deaf ears but I don't think either company's maturity level will be a surprise to anyone.

[wbmw]

Re: Fact is, Opteron is a lot more valuable for HP, IBM and SUN if Dell doesn´t carry it. And if Dell´s competitors start to win business because of Opteron, then Dell will eventually cave in, too. We´ll see if they will, eventually.

I understand your logic, but it remains to be seen if anyone can win business over Dell, in spite of carrying Opteron. I expect Opteron to gain in market share with those vendors who are carrying it, but it will probably come at the expense of those vendors' other product lines, rather than gains in the overall market. For example, I can see a customer buying a Proliant 585, rather than a 580, which will be an Opteron win at the expense of Xeon. However, a Dell customer will be more reluctant to buy HP's 585 over, say, a PowerEdge 6800. I have a feeling that Dell will maintain share, more or less, because for one thing, they are Dell. And for another, Intel's brand new platform has some real strengths besides pure performance. If AMD can get DC Opteron in high volume and make a quick transition, they will be successful, but there are certainly a lot of "buts". It's also possible that Intel will get a dual core server CPU based on Smithfield out to market before 2006.