Customers of Intel Corp said the world's biggest computer chipmaker plans to reduce prices on Pentium processors by as much as 60 percent to reclaim market share from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc.
Executives at Micro-Star International Co (
AMD last quarter increased its share of the US$35 billion computer chip market to more than 20 percent for the first time in more than four years. Intel chief executive officer Paul Otellini forecast the company's first annual sales decline in five years, and Dell Inc decided last month to buy some AMD chips for the first time.
"They're very aggressive about getting market share back," said Max Tsai, a product manager at Gigabyte.
Tsai said on Thursday that his Intel account manager in Taipei said prices will be cut.
"We're all surprised," Tsai said.
Intel said it would reduce prices of faster dual-core chips by about 15 percent, according to Alex Lin, a product marketing manager at Micro-Star, the nation's third-largest motherboard maker. Intel also told him that it plans to lower Pentium prices by 60 percent.
Citigroup Inc analyst Glen Yeung on Wednesday published a list of price cuts he anticipated from Intel next month, based on discussions with makers of computers and their components.
Pentium prices would fall 61 percent, Yeung said.
AMD also told Gigabyte that it plans to cut prices, though not by as much as Intel, Tsai said.
"Intel is fighting back," Ray Chen (
Yeung, citing conversations at the Computex trade show, predicted that "a more aggressive price war in microprocessors is forthcoming."
AMD isn't positioned for a price war, Yeung said.
Discussions with customers at Computex signaled AMD hasn't responded to the planned cuts.
Deep cuts by Intel may have a broad impact and hurt sales at distributors that market chips for manufacturers, said Patrick Moorhead, an AMD vice president for marketing.
"Knee-jerk pricing reactions like this wreak havoc," said Moorhead, who worked at Compaq Computer Corp before joining AMD.
"These are desperate moves ... I haven't seen this type of behavior, it's like a cornered animal," he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last