AMD Break Free

[jer888]

http://breakfree.amd.com/en-us/default.aspx


I personally think it was a abuse of power yet in a way it also wasn't.

If a company, e.x. dell, were to buy 500K processors from Intel then Intel would give them say 25$ off each processor. But if they were to buy 250K AMD and 250K Intel , Intel would prabably not give as large of a discount. I'm not sure if it worked like that or if Intel literally told the companies they'd give them more "rebates" if they didn't carry AMD. I'm not sure because I don't know enough about it.


Whats everyone think? (btw, this is not intended to be a flame war)

[HAL9000]

OK... I'm supposed to trust the site of one of the two parties involved for the supplied reading material??? I don't care whos side it is... there's going to be bias.

[mairving]

Happens all of the time in business. Why do some restaurants only carry Coke products and others carry Pepsi products? It's because they sign an exclusive deal to carry just one and get a price break. Home Depot, Walmart and grocery stores all sell shelf space which means that you are given shelf space according to what price you make to them or how much of a rebate (cough kickback) that you give them.

I was talking to a Milwaukee Tool rep just after they opened the first Home Depot in my city. He said that they had a meeting with the power tool vendors shortly before the new store opened. The HD manager told them that he was going to need $100K from each of them to help pay for advertising and asked if anyone had a problem with that. Most of the big boys kicked in. He didn't and as a result only had a couple of tools at the store.

[mbossman2]

In some ways, European antitrust laws are very different than US ones. the rebate component for a dominant player is an example. (BTW in Europe you can be considered "dominant" by having 80% market share OR 30% market share, with 30% being the largest, OR by saying that your are "dominant" or some such language).

The other 2: paying to hold back products and selling below cost are no-no's regardless of which side of the ocean you are on.

[jer888]

Yeah im sure the site is bias but if anyone didn't hear about it yet it has everything on it.

With the coke and pepsi thing, that makes sense but one product isn't clearly a better choice then the other like it was when it was Netburst vs Athlon 64. The fact that even though it was a pretty much agreed upon better choice, yet very hard to find in any prebuilt is kind of fishy.

[HAL9000]

So, Beta was a superior product to VHS.. and we all know how that turned out.

[SonicVanguard]

Originally Posted by HAL9000 So, Beta was a superior product to VHS.. and we all know how that turned out.

That turned out the way Sony intended - BetaMax went to the professional market and the easier to mass produce VHS went to the consumer market. Exactly what Sony had always intended.

[jer888]

I guess I'm saying it would be like if the only way to get a Core 2 Duo now was to build your own system, because AMD had locked down all the OEM's with K8's and was paying them off to only use their inferior product.