AMD excutive calls Centrino "garbage", then shoots self in foot

[Pandaren]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12742

Quoting

http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/breakingnews.asp?ArticleID=46155

Kevin Knox, director of worldwide enterprise business development for AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., made the remarks during a keynote at the Enterprise IT Week conference held in Las Vegas, which is held at the same time as Comdex.

"The chip [Pentium M] is good," Knox said. "The wireless technology they bundle with the chip is garbage. But if you want Centrino, you've got to take that technology."

Hahaha - publicly admitting that a competitor's product is good is a pretty dumb move. People will say - hey, Intel's worst enemy endorsed an Intel product! AMD should have advised this guy to keep his trap shut...

Edit: I don't think the Intel 802.11b adapter is a great product, but it's certainly no worse than any other 802.11b miniPCI product. Besides, the card itself is not that expensive - $29 from Dell, and encourages adoption of wireless as a standard feature in notebooks rather than a luxury option.

Besides, Intel has its own home grown 802.11g released for manufacturing - see here at digitimes

 

[alexruiz]

You obviously didn't read it completely..... he is talking specifically of the extra hyped wireless capability bundled.....

 

[Pandaren]

You obviously didn't read it completely..... he is talking specifically of the extra hyped wireless capability bundled.....

That wasn't my point. My point was that he shouldn't have said anything about the Pentium M being good at all. It would have been enough for him to simply say that Intel was using its marketing $ to promote a fairly generic 802.11b product.

I said he trashed Centrino, and then shot himself in the foot by praising the Pentium M. Endorsing a competitor's product is pretty stupid.

I think this should be obvious Alex.

 

[alexruiz]

Originally posted by: Pandaren

You obviously didn't read it completely..... he is talking specifically of the extra hyped wireless capability bundled.....

That wasn't my point. My point was that he shouldn't have said anything about the Pentium M being good at all. It would have been enough for him to simply say that Intel was using its marketing $ to promote a fairly generic 802.11b product.

I said he trashed Centrino, and then shot himself in the foot by praising the Pentium M. Endorsing a competitor's product is pretty stupid.

I think this should be obvious Alex.

I call it "confidence". There is nothing wrong with saying "the CPU is a good product". He is being honest. In fact, it helps AMD that the lower clocked P-M beats the higher clocked P4-M..... clockspeed is not everything.

He just acknowledged a good product from the rival camp, he neither say "my next laptop will have a P-M....," nor "intel CPUs are BETTER than ours...."
A touch of profesionalism? Maybe, as he could have said easily... "they are good, but we are BETTER"

 

[Soybomb]

I see nothing wrong with admiting a competitor makes a solid product. He didn't say its better than their offerings. It goes against the typical advertising that you're used to of "our product cures cancers....the competitors gives you ebola!" but certainly nothing wrong with going against the trend and using a little honesty.

 

[Frightcrawler]

there is nothing wrong with it, but its not like it will HELP them (AMD) in sales.
in fact, they are promoting the very company they are trying to beat.

 

[Hoplon]

While at the same time gaining consumer trust by telling the truth.

 

[Frightcrawler]

you've got a point there

 

[Pandaren]

I call it "confidence". There is nothing wrong with saying "the CPU is a good product".

No, there is nothing morally wrong, but it was not smart in the business sense.

Mr. Knox started off well by talking about how Centrino locks manufacturers into using the Intel wireless solution, but he should have then put the focus on AMD's platform, and played up AMD's strengths (value, flexibility). Instead, he put the focus on Pentium M and basically gave Pentium M the AMD stamp of approval.

While at the same time gaining consumer trust by telling the truth.

No, he was reinforcing consumer beliefs that Intel CPUs are the best solution (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't).

You don't get design wins by saying someone else's product is good. If this guy had been working for Microsoft and said "Linux is good" for the sake of honesty there would have been an uproar.

 

[alexruiz]

He couldn't have said anything else as right now there is NO AMD mobile platform that can compete with he P-M head to head....

I still think the Athlon XP-M is a better performing chip while giving a good fight in battery life... however, you don't drive a Ferrari with bycicle tires, and the XP-M coupled with the ATI IGP320 (the most popular mobile AMD configuration) is kind of that.....

He just admitted the competition had a good product, nothing wrong with that..... He didn't tell people to go buy some centrinos....

 

[UltraWide]

it won't really matter in a few months, intel has finalized their 802.11g draft/design and it's ready to go into silicone, so in the next quarter we'll see Centrino with 54mbps support.

 

[Soybomb]

Originally posted by: UltraWide
it won't really matter in a few months, intel has finalized their 802.11g draft/design and it's ready to go into silicone, so in the next quarter we'll see Centrino with 54mbps support.

like breast implants?

I don't think the bundled card plays much of a role in centrino's image to the consumer. They want the pentium m. For instance I go to dell and spec out a system and I can just as easily select another minipci card that does a/b/g from the dropdown for another $30. People want wireless and the battery life of the pentium m, but don't care if its officially a centrino package because of the wireless card or not.

I only play a pundit on tv btw