Originally posted by: Soviet
Originally posted by: nerp
I've read many times that this is tactic used by Dell frequently to pressure Intel to sweeten their arragement. With the prospect of Dell going with AMD on the horizon, I wouldn't doubt that Intel would scramble to do whatever they could to ensure it doesn't happen. Since Dell sells more computers than anyone, having an exclusivity arrangement with Dell is a large market share guarentee for any chip manufacturer.
No Dell official has gone on the record and admitted that it's simply a scare tactic to pressure Intel, but its an interesting rumor nonetheless.
Yes but Intel is the only company that can supply dell with the amount of CPU's required for their pc's. Cant remember where i read that but i believe it. Say Intel stopped supplying dell and dell were left with amd, then this leaves dells competitors a lot of room to take back market share, gateway and maybe even apple in the future (i think apple will get far larger now that they have swithced to intel) could take advantage of that. IMO Intels got dell by the balls, where else are they gonna get all their cpus from? AMD cant supply the numbers, transmeta is pulled outta the buisness, VIA? hah dont think so. They need Intel, Intel dosent NEED them. Not to say it wouldnt hurt Intel to stop selling to dell, but dell would suffer far more.
Intel is certainly in no position to put pressure on Dell. Intel cant afford losing that market and Intel can also not dictate Dell to sell Intel exclusively (remember, thats what AMD drags Intel to court for). Dell could happily sell both AMD and Intel, the only loss they would suffer is special deals for prices from Intel and even that might backfire at Intel in terms of antitrust lawsuits.
There are other advantages staying with Intel, like getting mainboards (and integrated vid cards on the low end crap) from Intel as well. It would be like committing suicide by Intel to dump Dell. And Dell will certainly not dump Intel completely. With that said, Dell is in the better position.
Once the analyst monkeys tell Michael Dell that driving on both lanes will compensate for the loss of getting special deals from Intel, it will happen. Just a matter of time.
And what makes you so sure about AMD cant supply the numbers? The only supply problem they recently had was due to packaging shortages by their contractors. They responded by getting another packager on board. Nobody but AMD can actually tell how many CPU's they can provide at any given time, now that the new fab is under full steam.