Playing to its strengths
It would be fair to say that things have been a bit on the quiet side from AMD in the past year, as it has worked to redefine itself following the spin-off of its manufacturing operations and has strived to return to profitability in the face of the global recession.
But sometimes it pays to keep a low profile. While its competitors have increasingly focused on the mobile sector, AMD has been able to gain ground in GPUs and realign its CPU positioning to focus less on going toe-to-toe with Intel, and more on claiming the mainstream, less techie end-user.
One major area of focus for AMD recently has been the channel. With the Intel litigation resolved - and with it a possibly more level playing field as well as a handy bit of cash - AMD has refocused on a traditional area of strength. Last September it launched the Fusion Partner Programme, focused primarily on its biggest accounts. Today AMD has expanded it to include its commercial channel and software partners.
The commercial channel focuses on resellers that target commercial customers and offer complete platform solutions. One of the aims seems to be to encourage the promotion of systems that stick with AMD for the CPU, GPU and chipset - something only AMD can offer, but which it has struggled to capture the market's imagination with.
There's also a new, improved partner portal, the UK version of which you can access here, which offers all the usual partner support, marketing collateral, etc. It will be officially launched later this month.
"Since the launch of the AMD Fusion Partner Program in September 2009, I'm pleased to announce that in Q4 2009, we saw an 80% increase in Elite and Premier component partners selling all-AMD solutions and 100% of our Elite component partners hit their revenue targets," said David Kenyon, VP of worldwide channel marketing at AMD.
