Advanced Micro Devices is stepping up the pressure on Intel over alleged anticompetitive practices by filing another complaint, this time with German authorities.
The latest complaint was filed last week with Germany's Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt. In it, AMD claims that Intel made deals with German retailers that violate the country's competition laws.
The complaint was prompted by a report in the German edition of the Financial Times claiming that the Media Markt retail electronics chain had agreed to only sell computers that used Intel's processors in return for a payment from the chipmaker.
"AMD had already received similar information, so we decided to file a formal complaint with the Federal Cartel Office," AMD spokeswoman Hollis Krym explained.
"We're checking with colleagues in Brussels to see whether they will take this complaint on as well," the Federal Cartel Office representative explained.
In June 2005, AMD filed a lawsuit against Intel, claiming that it had forced major customers to accept exclusive deals, and had withheld rebates and marketing subsidies from customers who bought more AMD processors than Intel had allowed.
The next month, European Commission officials raided Intel's offices in Swindon, England, as well as the offices of several PC retailers, including Dell.
It is silly, and unproductive for a competitor to sue, or file complaints over practices that one is not alien to. If a retailer, or consumer was unhappy, then the suit would actually make sense.
AMD is losing its way really fast. But then, again, it is all a sign of our times ... it don't look good right now.
I was working at Best Buy in the computer department back in the late 90's when AMD released the successor to their mildly successful K6-2 processors, codenamed K-7 and later named Athlon. The processors were released, but we saw no computers utilizing them and no motherboards available for them, despite the fact that benchmarks were showing an overwhemling performance gap over anything Intel had out at the time, or that the Athlon chips were less expensive.
The word from our vendors (Toshiba specifically) was that Intel was telling EVERYONE that if they supported AMD's new processor, that Intel would not supply them any of their own processors. This was at a time when Intel had something like 80%+ marketshare. It turns out that companies like Asus finally started releasing motherboards, but sold them out of white boxes, with no name branding whatsoever, to try to avoid Intel's wrath.
As a retailer, Best Buy was hurt by Intel's actions because they were unable to offer customers an available, less expensive, superior technology, as Intel had stifled the competition. I remember that Intel hadn't released anything faster than their Pentium III 500MHz part for almost a year. They didn't have to; they had their market under wraps and could (and did) charge whatever they wanted. THEY TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THEIR DOMINANT POSITION IN THE MARKETPLACE ILLEGALY.
As a consumer, I was hurt because I wanted to build a computer using AMD's much faster and cheaper processor but couldn't. Once AMD's parts became available, I swore off of Intel and have been building and buying AMD ever since.
AMD has every right to sue the pants off of Intel for this. I'm only wondering why they haven't done it sooner.
...(and usually illegal) for any business to intefere between another business and their customers. If they can't compete based on the price and/or value of their products, they should get the hell out of the business.
These anti-trust laws are there for a reason. If they are being violated, they need to be enforced. Intel would not hesitate a second if the situation were reversed.
This is the dark side of capitalism and one reason why it gets such a bad rap. It needs to stop.
If you look at the right-hand next to the story, you'll see in the related stories section that AMD first filed these lawsuits in June of last year. As far as I know, AMD had proven that their fastest processors were superior to Intel's fastest at that time. AMD was also poised to overtake Intel's retail marketshare for the first time EVER.
Good for AMD, competition is good! WE ALL NEED this! As an aside, I saw some interesting banter the last couple of months concerning AMD on stockenstein.com - those editors over there have some strong opinions. Thank god I got out of AMD at the start of this year eh? Cheers all!
Its ironic that AMD is always complaining. Are they an Estate Agency? They remind me of GWB who cleverly distracts the American public from the real issues. In AMDs case, they dont want gold digging investors to realize that their roadmap came from a milk bar (convenience store).
AMD, stop acting like a big baby and make chips. We all know that anything goes in the third world and you are not an angel either. For corporate reasons, Im sure that you hide your septic tank.
Google creates an animated doodle that features a boy, a girl, Google's search engine, and a jump rope. But might there be darker, more analytical, more troubling interpretations to this tale?
The Silicon Valley online payments startup grew by 1,000 percent last year and is hopeful it can repeat that level of growth this year. To do that, it's had to move away from its early friends-and-family roots and embrace small businesses.
Chamtech's spray-on antenna uses a nano material to provide a low-power boost to antenna range. The wireless-in-a-can product may some day bring an end to unsightly cell towers.
EnerG2 opens a plant to make an engineered carbon that will improve performance of energy storage devices and make storage for start-stop hybrid cars less expensive.
complaints over practices that one is not alien to. If a retailer, or
consumer was unhappy, then the suit would actually make sense.
AMD is losing its way really fast. But then, again, it is all a sign of
our times ... it don't look good right now.
The word from our vendors (Toshiba specifically) was that Intel was telling EVERYONE that if they supported AMD's new processor, that Intel would not supply them any of their own processors. This was at a time when Intel had something like 80%+ marketshare. It turns out that companies like Asus finally started releasing motherboards, but sold them out of white boxes, with no name branding whatsoever, to try to avoid Intel's wrath.
As a retailer, Best Buy was hurt by Intel's actions because they were unable to offer customers an available, less expensive, superior technology, as Intel had stifled the competition. I remember that Intel hadn't released anything faster than their Pentium III 500MHz part for almost a year. They didn't have to; they had their market under wraps and could (and did) charge whatever they wanted. THEY TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THEIR DOMINANT POSITION IN THE MARKETPLACE ILLEGALY.
As a consumer, I was hurt because I wanted to build a computer using AMD's much faster and cheaper processor but couldn't. Once AMD's parts became available, I swore off of Intel and have been building and buying AMD ever since.
AMD has every right to sue the pants off of Intel for this. I'm only wondering why they haven't done it sooner.
These anti-trust laws are there for a reason. If they are being violated, they need to be enforced. Intel would not hesitate a second if the situation were reversed.
This is the dark side of capitalism and one reason why it gets such a bad rap. It needs to stop.
I guess if you can't beat them on price and performance, then you can beat them with lawsuits.
waahh!!
Cry like a little baby.
What a bunch of whiners.
Nothing wrong with AMD's timing.
from the MicrSoft playbook! <wink>
AMD, stop acting like a big baby and make chips. We all know that anything goes in the third world and you are not an angel either. For corporate reasons, Im sure that you hide your septic tank.