Competition In The Microprocessor Market: Intel, AMD And Beyond

Describe the characteristics of the industry in which Intel operates. How is Intel positioned in the industry?

Led the PC microprocessor market and ousted competition through sole licensor decision: Post losing a contract to supply microprocessors to Apple, in early 1980s, Intel won a contract to provide the same to IBM for its PCs. IBM PCs were a huge success and catapulted Intel to gain market leadership. IBM initially forced Intel to license its product to other players to secure adequate supplies reducing Intel’s potential

Another way of achieving the profit of the added value is investment in software development to leverage the advantage of the high performance processors. And that was achieved by development of complementors, although Intel had a relationship with Microsoft, but it was enough, since it required Microsoft years to develop the software, were Intel is moving faster, by adopting the strategy of complementors, Intel build its capital. Intel strategy was to invest in companies that fit strategically into Intel’s business strategy as well as offered a financial return.

This case traces the strategic decisions of Intel Corporation which defined its evolution from being a start-up developer of semiconductor memory chips in 1968 to being the industry leader of microprocessors in 1997 when it ranked amongst the top five American companies and had stock market valuation of USD 113 billion.

This report discusses the case study ‘Intel Research: Exploring the Future [1], published in 2005 by the Harvard Business School. The discussion is divided into three different sections: overview, analysis and conclusion.

we are wondering how the move of AMD can be effective, yield commercially viable and by

In one and half month the single word of one mathematician has turned into a worldwide campaign against us. AMD, Cyrix, and Nexgen are benefiting most from these events. They proved to have become quicker in manufacturing clones of our innovative products. Given this shorter time to market, they may jump on this opportunity to deliver Pentium clones any time. Our strategy to stop competitors copying our new products was heavy patent protection for the Pentium brand, however if our brand image is continually damaged to such extent, that protection would not give us the competitive advantage we expected. Although we have been the chips of choice for most of users, with the current negative publicity, the competitors may find their niche and expand their market share. Cost of switching from one type of processor to another (for example from Intel to AMD) is not significant for computer manufacturers due to the modular nature of this product. We know that this flaw would not affect any significant portion of the personal users (about 3.7 millions chips sold). The business users with heavy calculation needs such as engineering and specifically financial sectors would

1. Discuss whether the analysts following Intel appear to have been influenced by any biases, both generally and in their reaction to Intel’s announcement in September 2000 (3 marks).

With Intel have very few substitutes in the microprocessor industry, it is it is most certain that current customers will not want to switch and use another company’s products. High switching cost presents low bargaining power to the customers mainly because it would be very expensive to switch to a competitor, and since Intel is the leader in the market, switching

All these factors make the PC industry interesting, and invite scholars and business analysts for in-depth analysis of the industry to understand the main forces that are shaping its competitiveness.

Intel actively searches for new opportunities in different (chip) markets, and when these new markets after a while are getting more and more established, Intel protects its market share by significantly reducing the chip’s prices (Lumpkin & Dess, 2001).

• Competition : Apple with propriety architecture had 20% market share, Compac enters in ’82, Dell in ’84,

True to nearly any commoditized product, pricing and availability became the only two significant differentiators quickly as Intel increased

As indicated in the table above, Dell and HP are the strongest players in the computer industry. These results are also supported by the market share statistics presented in case Exhibit 3. Conversely, the table above indicates Acer as the industry’s weakest rival in part because it focuses on producing low priced computers,

Smartphone market is fast-moving and very high competitive due to intense competition between two big smartphone producers, Apple and Samsung. At the beginning, Apple dominated this market solely by introducing a new innovative type of smartphone by Steve Jobs that has revolutionized people lifestyle and mobile industry. A few years after launching iPhone, a new fast following competitor, Samsung came into this market, and their sales have outperformed Apple from the year 2011 (According to Chart A1 in Appendix). In term of developing their product, Samsung has created its products by following Apple’s technology since the beginning of producing its smartphone, therefore there are many patent lawsuits between them. Since Steve Job passed away, Apple has continued to develop its core competence, which is an innovation of new type of smartphone that could help them to take back their market share from its rival, Samsung. Nonetheless, the competition between Apple and Samsung will still continue intensively in the future.