FRANKFURT, May 27 (Reuters) - The European Union's competition authority plans to take action against Intel Corp's (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) sales and distribution practices and will publish an official decision late this summer, a newspaper reported
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In the report released on Tuesday ahead of publication on Wednesday, the newspaper said the EU would stop Intel from marketing its microprocessors at a discount to PC makers
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It also said the EU would forbid the world's biggest chipmaker from subsidizing retailers' advertising costs, to the extent that it demanded exclusivity in stores in return
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Intel's rival, AMD (AMD.N: Quote, Profile, Research), has repeatedly accused Intel of unfair practices that it says help it maintain its huge market lead
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The EU recently fined Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) a record 899 million euros ($1.4 billion)
Intel will be fined. The EU fatheads will get payed. AMD will still whine.
At this moment in time AMD has the weaker product. The rest is reputation from the golden age of Intel being stable and AMD being an overheating unstable clone.
I still have friends who avoid AMD like the plague.
It,s good if Intel needs to pay up. I worked for media markt (saturn) for a while, similar to Best Buy in the states and they only carried intel pc's and later I found out that the head office received 15 million yearly from intel if they only carried intel pc's. And that is not right, in the end the consumer pays.
Microsoft & Intel = floughting laws. Probably American law too but they have enough lobbyists & lawyers to scupper most cases against them.
Isn't that the American way of doing business? Buy some members of Congress and avoid mention of shady business practices. And if something does turn public, buy some of the media (Microsoft/NBC). If all else fails, put some money into a President's pocket, or someone running for President, as the case may be.
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Evil lurks in the databanks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.
If it's mutual and signed in agreement it's not illegal. If however someone proves that there were shady tactics involved (like "go exclusive or you don't get low prices" or "we might not even sell to you if you don't go exclusive" ) it becomes a problem.
A computer shop/retailer/etailer can always decide not to sell a certain brand of products. It's almost impossible for me to buy a DFI motherboard here. Funny how you don't see DFI whining about other brands having a larger market share.
Message edited by Andrius on 05-28-2008 at 07:28:54 PM
Come back every now and again and cause an irritation..
Intel4Life
AMD4Wife
I hope they cure you soon
ROFL.
That's funny. My wife has a Dell computer, it's a total piece. I have a custom built machine with three gigs of RAM. If my wife needed her computer replaced, she'd probably end up getting a dell with an AMD proc.
