Intel Accused of Giving Dell $6 Billion in Perks
Intel is accused of giving PC makers substantial amounts of money in exchange for exclusivity.
The State of New York has filed a lawsuit against Intel accusing the chipmaker of paying vendors billions of dollars in rebates to not use AMD chips. Xbitlabs reports that IBM, Dell and HP are among the companies that received rebates, with Dell receiving roughly $6 billion over five years.
According to lawsuit, Dell was paid rebates based on how many CPUs it bought. Xbit reports that the percentage of the rebate could fluctuate and it reached 16 percent while Dell contemplated using AMD chips. Dell allegedly received $6 billion dollars between 2002 and 2007 and the Wall Street Journal reports that these payments sometimes exceeded Dell's profits with payments for one fiscal quarter constituting 116 percent of Dell's reported net income.
The news following an EU decision to impose hefty fines upon Intel for anticompetitive practices. Intel offered similar rebates in the European market and paid vendors to delay or cancel the launch of AMD products. The European Union fined the company €3.45 billion in May of this year.

Of course, it doesn't seem like Intel cares one way or another, they already got busted for this in the first place in the 90's, which led to AMD keeping their x86 license permanently. Maybe this time AMD gets free license to the latest Nehalim tech too.
Show of hands…who here still believes that the i7-975 Extreme Edition is worth $1000??? Any hands? How much is Intel marking up to cover $1.2 billion in bribes? 100%? 200%? 500%??? Who really knows.
They should go around to all the companies that accepted the bribe and take out $6 billion then head over to Intel and take out another $6 billion then drive it over to AMD and leave $12 billion on their doorstep with a note that says “have fun!”
I was talking myself into purchasing Intel for some machines I was about to build but I clearly see me purchasing AMD all the way.
It's called incentive, saying "hey you buy more of my chips you can get X% discount and sell them at the same price and make a lot more $"
AMD couldn't do this because Intel has polluted the market with their chips so AMD couldn't even get a foothold.
This article:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/04/technology/cuomo_sues_intel_antitrust/index.htm
has been up for days now.
I wouldn't be so critical if it weren't for the fact that I also emailed in a news tip on it two days ago.
These allegations are identical to what Intel got in trouble for in the EU, and this investigation has been going on for years in the US. It isn't new...we yanks just like to call it antitrust, and the exact laws vary a little. The real story goes beyond lawsuits and fines from the state of NY (which still has more reach than it might sound). The biggest part is that Intel is basically still a US company, and at least for these parts of the company...if this catches the FTC's eye they could force Intel to reorganize however they see fit (like what faced Microsoft years ago)
If you own your own business you wouldn't shop the cheaper price if it meant making money.
amd turion x2 processor. Glad i got this. Offers good performance
for the its price.
If you ask me, manufacturers would make a killing if they opt amd
becuse it brings the laptops to an affordable price range so many
people can buy it. The intel version of the same laptop would have set me back by ~$400.