intel indock - the details
Among the many things AMD's complaint alleges Intel has done to "unlawfully" maintain its monopoly are:
* Force major customers - such as Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, and Hitachi – into "Intel-exclusive deals in return for outright cash payments, discriminatory pricing or marketing subsidies" that are conditional on AMD being excluded
* Pay Dell and Toshiba "huge" sums not to do business with AMD
* Pay Sony "millions" for exclusivity. AMD's share of Sony's business is said to have fallen from "23 per cent in 2002, to eight per cent to 2003, to zero, where it remains today".
* Force major trade customers - such as NEC, Acer, and Fujitsu - into partial exclusivity agreements by "conditioning rebates, allowances and market development funds on customers' agreement to severely limit or forego entirely purchases from AMD"
* Establish a system of discriminatory and retroactive incentives triggered by purchases at such high levels as to have the intended effect of denying customers the freedom to purchase any significant volume of processors from AMD
AMD's complaint also alleges that:
* Intel threatened retaliation against trade customers for introducing AMD-based computers, particularly in strategic market segments such as commercial desktop
* Compaq was forced to stop buying AMD CPUs because, according to the then-CEO Michael Capellas, Intel withheld delivery of critical server chips, holding "a gun to his head"
* Gateway executives claimed that Intel has "beaten them into 'guacamole'" in retaliation for their company's limited dealing with AMD
* Intel established and enforced quotas among key retailers - such as Best Buy and Circuit City - effectively requiring them to stock overwhelmingly or exclusively, Intel computers, thus artificially limiting consumer choice
* AMD was entirely excluded from Media Markt, Europe's largest computer retailer, and accounting for 35 per cent of Germany's retail sales
* Craig Barrett, while CEO of Intel, threatened Acer's chairman with "severe consequences" for supporting the AMD Athlon 64 launch. This, AMD says, "coincided with an unexplained delay by Intel in providing $15-20M in market-development funds owed to Acer", and that "Acer withdrew from the launch in September 2003"
* Intel's compilers, which ranslate software programs into machine-readable language, were "designed to degrade a program's performance if running on a computer powered by an AMD CPU".
There is no information yet about how long the initial court proceedings will last - likewise any subsequent hearings. However, success for AMD in its litigation could result in multi-million-dollar fines for Intel and force changes in its business practices that would loosen its stranglehold on the x86 CPU market - which is what AMD desperately wants.
Pop over to this to the DVdoctor.news forums thread to read AMD's press release about the anti-trust case, access other related information, and have your say on AMD's action and Intel's alleged excesses.
