The Inquirer – Thursday 21 September 2006:
THE CEO of AMD, Hector Ruiz, said that Apple will eventually use its processors as well as Intel’s in its PCs.
Ruiz speaking at a dinner in San Francisco, and reported by bloomberg.net, told the audience that Apple wouldn’t want to be a hostage to Intel, like other firms had been.
He also berated Intel for slowing growth in the PC industry by making customers battle on price alone.
But the PC industry is far from mature, because only 16 per cent of the world has internet access, so there’s a lot of room for growth.
An Intel “monopoly” and the “Inside” campaign had made its brand be associated with PCs and eroded margins. But that no longer needed to be the case.
Not for a while I would bet. Once Steve finds something he likes, he usually sticks with it.
I don’t doubt Apple will hint about it to rattle Intel’s cage. Michael Dell does this frequently, especially before pricing negotiations. I think it’s sad that we only have two real chip players in such a huge market. That tells of the cost of R&D and how low the margins are.
RT — you forgot one more quality — patience. Corporate America lives and dies on a couple of quarters of reports and then craps out.
I had an acquaintance who was COO of a facility set-up to initiate competition with companies like Intl and TI — eventually to narrow their focus; but, starting out with capable, competent research and staff. It belonged to a Fortune 50 company. An 8-figure investment by a corporation with 11-figure numbers.
Though doing well and becoming a presence of note, they folded it after 2 years. “Enough time wasted”.
CEO, SHEMEKNOW, idiot doesnt understand the new market -SPINACH-
Agree bit if it gets headlines, it’s all free PR for AMD . Hector and his marketing team are exploiting rhetoric, rumors, fear and promises to get their name out.
This wild and out of the blue speculation that some day Apple will use them is part of the strategy. If Dell is an indication, I expect Apple to use AMD sometime in the year 2025.
I think AMD needs a hug…
Hey Ruiz… would you like some cheese with that WHINE? Sheez.. if you gotta better product it’ll sell.. otherwise, STFU
The only Reason AMD exists is the same reason Apple Exists too: So That the courts won’t split Intel/M$ into tiny pieces like the baby bells.
Well, IBM must have very nice arrangements with their big buyers. Case in point, Dell has used Intel chips almost exclusively since they opened their doors.
I would imagine there are a lot of smoke filled room deals that are made for the volume of chips that Dell and Apple buy. It seems pretty obvious that Apple got a SWEET deal on the Core 2 Duos if they can price the Mac Pro below an equivalent Dell workstation. I would expect this trend to continue in future with the quads.
Besides, Intel chips are currently edging ahead of AMD. Why would Jobs piss off Intel for a chip of lesser capability and future growth capacity?
I don’t see Apple switching to AMD anytime soon. Heck, look at how loyal they were with Motorola in the face of poor chip performance.
“Eventually” is the key word here.
I don’t see this happening ever. One, Apple went with Intel for the low-power chips that IBM couldn’t produce. AMD produces those nice CPU’s that can be used to heat floors. Two, can you imagine an AMD version of a Mac and an Intel version, side by side? One would have to go cheaper than the other, and we know which ones will sell first. Steve doesn’t play the margins game this way.
I’ve been an AMD fan (non-cooling variety, hehe) for about 10 years now, and as much as I’d like to see an AMD based Mac, I don’t count on seeing one ever.
Wong is Wrong.
AMD has done a very good job of competing with Intel over the past few years. Intel just recently got control of the CPU race after AMD had a nice two year run (starting with their Athlon 64 chip).
Apple has positioned itself as an end-to-end technology company, while M$ is stuck in the old shrinkwrap model.
The idea that Intel or M$ could get rid of their shadows like that is silly.
Well, when you look at the fact that AMD’s entire line is based off of cloning the x86 architecture that Intel started, and their newest chip wasn’t just beaten, but spanked by the C2D series, even after a few years of dominance AMD is still fighting to be used commonly by any producer other than the gaming builders. And they’re losing that now to Intel as well because of the massive performance gain of the new Core 2 Extreme. AMD seems to be targeting Apple because of their proprietary full hardware concept, which AMD sees as a massive profit potential in line with their questionable purchase of ATI…
While true, remember that AMD has dictated the direction the market has gone with 64-bit… not Intel. Intel’s goal was to get away from x86, not expand the instruction set.