shocky123

Hahah, I never thought I'd see the day....... (again)...

Link
http://news.com.com/Dell+opts+for+AM...l?tag=nefd.top

Dell opts for AMD's Opteron

By Tom Krazit and Ina Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: May 18, 2006, 2:00 PM PDT Last modified: May 18, 2006, 3:12 PM PDT

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update Dell has agreed to use Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chip in multiprocessor servers by the end of the year, ending a long-standing policy of sticking exclusively with Intel.
The PC maker made the move public in its first-quarter earnings press release on Thursday. Speculation has mounted for years as to whether Dell would adopt the company's chips, despite Dell's exclusive relationship with rival Intel to this point. AMD has enjoyed a performance lead in server benchmarks over Intel's Xeon processors.
"We welcome Dell, and Dell customers, to the world of AMD64," Marty Seyer, an AMD senior vice president for commercial business, said in a statement distributed after Dell's earnings release.
Although the deal is confined to servers at this point, it still represents another win for AMD, which has had a long string of gains over its rival.
Dell's decision to abandon its longstanding all-Intel policy comes amid less-than-stellar earnings for the first quarter. The results were in line with the warning the company provided last week. Revenue was $14.2 billion, up 6 percent from last year, but net income slid 18 percent to $762 million. Dell said it's no longer giving specific quarterly financial guidance, though it did say the second quarter should be similar to the first.
Dell said on Thursday it was accelerating its plans for $3 billion in cost cuts and will spend $100 million on improving its customer service. The cost cuts will come from improving the efficiency of its support and manufacturing processes, Rollins said on the conference call. "We'll have the flexibility to price more effectively," he said. There will not be any job cuts, he said.
On a conference call following the earnings release, CEO Kevin Rollins said that Dell will only sell AMD processors in servers with four processors--a relatively small category of the server market. There are no plans to sell AMD's chips in desktop PCs, notebooks or other servers at this time, he said.
"Our customers expressed a desire for that technology," Rollins said, referring to Opteron. "We will still be launching this year a broad base of Intel products."
Two-way servers--a much larger segment of the server market--are expected from Dell based on Intel's Dempsey processor in the coming weeks, and Intel has accelerated the launch of its Woodcrest processor for that two-way category to June.
Company founder Michael Dell admitted the company's performance over the last year had been disappointing. "I think there are lots of opportunities for us to do quite a bit better than we did last year," he said at the Future in Review conference Monday. "We didn't recognize how competitive the market was going to be."
Round the corner
Several times during the last few years, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins has hinted that the company was right around the corner from introducing products based on AMD's chips. Ever since AMD introduced Opteron in 2003, the processor has enjoyed an advantage over Intel's Xeon. During an extended period in 2005, server vendors Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and IBM were shipping dual-core versions of the Opteron processor, and Dell could offer only single-core Xeon processors.
Rollins said the decision was not related to the antitrust lawsuit AMD filed against Intel last year, in which AMD charged that Intel uses selective pricing schemes designed to provide incentives for its customers to exclude AMD from certain accounts, such as Dell. Intel has denied the charges, and Rollins said he doesn't expect Intel to penalize Dell for adopting AMD.
"Intel has been a great partner, and is going to stay a great partner. They are still going to (provide) the vast majority of our processors," Rollins said.
"We appreciate that Dell shows strong support for the bulk of our product offerings and belief in the strength of our roadmap," Intel spokesman Scott McLaughlin said in a statement. "The (four-way) niche has been a challenging one but our next-generation Intel Xeon processor MP (Tulsa), shipping in the second half of 2006, will provide a competitive product."

Mercury Research analyst Dean McCarron said that a lack of AMD-based systems has hurt Dell in the server business, which, though a fairly small unit market, accounts for a disproportionate share of PC industry profits.
"They've been feeling a lot of competition from Opteron products from the other Tier 1 players," McCarron said, pointing specifically to IBM, HP and Sun.
"Presumably it got to the point where Dell had to decide what mattered more--loyalty or trying to deal with the competition," he said.
While late to the market, McCarron said, Dell could still nab a piece of the Opteron server pie.
"This is a very competitive business," McCarron said. "The fact that they have lost market share doesn't mean that they can't regain it."
Meanwhile, Dell said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to sell up to $1 billion short-term unsecured notes, known as commercial paper.


(In Kyles Opinion)

Sadly, I see this as being the slow downfall of the other Tier-1 companies, now Dell will be able to outprice them, and perform at similar levels, however I still see a huge customer service issue knowing that Dell CS probably know nothing about the Opterons architecture -- Unless they use their 'slaves' from the AlienWare buyout. (no offense to anyone..)

~Kyle

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brainsmile

yup... that stock is soaring in after hours

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LegendKiller

Time to buy more intel.

The P/E ratio on AMD isn't justified.

clutchy

tell me about it, i've been eyeballing that stock for awhile now. 13% overnight... that's nuts.

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thanks X

brainsmile

how do you foresee Intel growing in the future?

clutchy

AMD and intel have always batted back and forth with eachother. this is the lowest i've seen intel stock since i've been watching it and i'm not sure if it's finished going down...

having said that i've never seen AMD stock this high before soo....


i'm a little nervous about it, but intel is coming out with that whopper of a chip soon and i have a feeling their stock price will go up with increased confidence and purchasing from the fanboi's.

Kevster

This is why I have stock in Intel right now. I'm down just over 5% right now on my position (excluding call option profits), but Intel is clearly not going anywhere. I buy AMD's products, but I wouldn't touch their stock right now. There's way too much emotional momentum with it and there will be a hard correction in it's future. I am looking forward to seeing Intel's new hardware design - between the financials and the promising new products, it makes a worthy investment (even if it is at 52-week lows).

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ray

I remember when it ballooned to $90/share

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clutchy

I wasn't watching it then, but yeah... i tend to discount the bubble.


I agree, i need to get some money into my scottrade acct. pronto!!

ray

We've all been discussing it for years and there have been rumors every few months about this happening. We all know Dell finally added AMD chips to their server line of computers, so maybe this time it's true they are rolling it out to all their products.

Big upside for AMD here if they really have a contract with Dell.

I would go into a whole stock discussion, but figure I'd start that in the Finance section sometime.


http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/pro...613&ID=5794225

June 13, 2006 05:57 PM ET

NEW YORK (AP) - Dell Inc. could roll out a desktop computer based on an Advanced Micro Devices Inc. chip as early as September, according to a Wall Street analyst.

The report comes less than a month after Dell Inc. said it would begin using chips made by Advanced Micro Devices Inc., spurning its longtime partner Intel Corp.

"Citigroup Investment Research has confirmed from industry sources that Dell will offer an AMD based desktop in September of this year. No details of box configuration are available. We note that AMD has recently expressed confidence that they will gain share in the second half of the year, and we point to this win as the basis for this confidence," Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung wrote in a note.

Yeung noted that although the Dell news is good, the company's results could get nipped by price cuts, weak computer sales and share lost to Intel in the server space.

Shares of AMD closed down $1.29, or 5 percent, at $24.39 in Friday trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, Dell's stock added 21 cents to end at $25.10 on the Nasdaq, and lost 1 cent in aftermarket activity.

AlpineJay

Yeah. I think the Conroe/Merom architecture may very well save Intel from dropping its market share any further. I am holding out for this chip to come in and get through the first round of benchmarks to buy my next laptop and think it will be well worth the wait and the premium I will pay over Yonah.

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Showtime

Great news for us people waiting on killer dell deals with AMD inside. Looks like my next rig is going to be a $300 server from dell.

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Markel

I just read an interesting article on The Inquirer about "Dell's defection to AMD": http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32419

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ray

Being a fan of AMD from a consumer and investor standpoint, I will bump this thread once again. I chose this thread, in particular, because LK had made a comment about the P/E Ratio of AMD and how it wasn't justified. While that may hold true, and despite Intel's price war push, it seems the price war finally hit Intel...hard.

Intel announced that they were cutting their work force by 10% by the year 2008 which would save them $3B/year. The full story linked:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060905/...structuring_12

What makes this corporate restructuring interesting is that Intel initiated price wars to "reverse sinking profits and regain market share stolen by smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc."

Now, I don't work for Intel but it seems their price wars may have gained back a little bit of market share, but at the expense of their overall profits. And apparently that decrease in overall profits amounts to, say, $3B a year.

LK mentioned he was going to stockpile more Intel. The way I see it, high P/E ratio or not, is I should be stockpiling more AMD.

InfiniteNothing

Uhm, maybe you should send him an email instead.

zippyjuan

In related news:

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ray

My post wasn't directed to LK specifically, as it was to generate more discussion.

brainsmile

That was a nice boost in my portfolio today. Also... AAPL jumped nicely too.