While the market is trying to recover from the floods in Thailand AMD is confident. Besides discussing the harddrive shortage, Read reveals that AMD has no plans to acquire an ARM license, but the door is not closed forever.
Intel has announced that the harddrive shortage will result in a lower than expected revenue, about 1 billion dollar lower for Q4. AMD VP Rory Read is confident this will not affect AMD to any substantial degree in Q4 2011. For the first and second quarter next year it might have a negative effect on AMD’s revenue. These are some very big words since archrival Intel has more or less said the opposite.
“I do not see major pressure in terms of the quarter. It is about executing and delivering.[…]I have been through eleven supply chain market events, battery fires, LCD shortage, memory shortage, I have seen them all. This is a very resilient supply chain. In the beginning of the quarter there were a lot of hard drives supply in the channel and that kept things going pretty well; in Q1 and Q2, maybe you see some manifestations, but I would not bet against the supply chain. From AMD perspective, we have a lot of opportunities given the current market share,” – Rory Read during IT Supply Chain.
AMD had to lower expectation for Q3 this year due to poor yields and inability to deliver the quantities it had expected, but these were internal problems if a different nature than the harddrive shortage. At the same time questions arises if parts of the harddrive manufacturing will be moved over to Malaysia, the Philipines and China, instead of having everything in the same country – and putting all eggs in the same basket.
Intel is no longer the only competition
A while back a quote from an AMD spokesperson was misinterpreted and people were lead to believe AMD was about to leave x86. What he really meant was that people has to stop thinking “AMD vs Intel” because the market is different now. What he meant was that ARM partners like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments were pushing into their market space, as the market is heading for a breaking point.
“It’s not that we turn our back on the competitors. It’s that we become customer- and market-focused. What’s most important is that you always listen to the customer. When the customer speaks, the industry speaks, you’ve got to listen.”
AMD has no plans to work with ARM, but Rory Read believes in AMD’s product portfolio. AMD has not closed the door on ARM, but is keeping an open mind for the future depending on how the market develops and demands. he also commented on Intel and said it was unlikely it would cooperate with ARM, but wants to remain at status quo.
“We have a lot of IP and a lot of capability. We’re going to continue to play those cards, but as you move forward, making sure that you’re able to be ambidextrous is definitely a winning hand.”
Source: MarketWatch
