“Hector Ruiz, chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., said Apple Computer Inc. will eventually buy its semiconductors to provide an alternative to Intel Corp. chips,” Ian King and Ron Day report for Bloomberg.
King and Day report, “Apple started selling computers based on Intel microprocessors in February, and its exclusive use of them will drive it toward using Advanced Micro parts, Ruiz said in a speech yesterday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. ‘Everybody wants choice,’ Ruiz said in the speech, in which he added that larger rival Intel’s practices have stifled the PC industry’s growth. ‘Knowing Apple, why would they want to be held hostage like everyone else has been?'”
“Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro, the world’s second-biggest chipmaker, is Intel’s only remaining competitor in the more than $30 billion market for microprocessors, the computing engine of personal computers. Last year, Ruiz’s company grabbed sales from Hewlett-Packard Co. and other PC makers, pushing Intel’s share of the market to less than 80 percent for the first time in four years,” King and Day report. “Apple added to its share of personal computer sales in the U.S. market in the second quarter. The Cupertino, California- based company reported shipments increased 16 percent to 760,000 units, expanding its share to 4.8 percent from 4.4 percent, market researcher IDC said July 19.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Currently, and for the foreseeable future, AMD lags behind Intel’s processors. Ruiz talks choice because he doesn’t like the choice made by Apple. It sounds like wishful thinking by Ruiz; Apple made the right choice with Intel. Still, anything can happen and, with Apple, it often does.
Related articles:
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IDC: Apple Mac attained 4.8% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 4.6% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
‘Fantastic quarter’ helps Apple double share of U.S. retail notebook market to 12% – July 19, 2006
Intel Core 2 Duo ‘Conroe’ vs. AMD Athlon FX62 – July 17, 2006
Report: Dell signs deal with AMD for millions of chips for full range of desktops, notebooks – June 26, 2006
Apple chose well: Intel poised to take massive lead across the board over AMD – June 07, 2006
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Choice is good, especially for us. Before, choice meant – Who will be slower and make less substantial upgrades between chips, IBM or Motorola?
Now, Intel and AMD have yet another vendor… a vendor that has a passionate following.
Apple is not being held hostage because they do have the choice. Apple is not tied into Intel, but they will be loyal as Intel scrambles to remain competitive. Intel will do all the work to remain competitive against AMD. One of apple’s advantages is their streamlined supply chain. Adding an alternative processor will only complicate the process.
AMD’s behind because they haven’t made any major chip releases lately. Last time they had a major chip revamp, they were ahead of Intel by light years, and then Intel updated their line and now Intel’s ahead. It’s basically whoever takes the fastest, longest steps who wins. All we have to do now is see AMD’s next big step.
MacDailyNews Take: Currently, and for the foreseeable future, AMD lags behind Intel’s processors. Ruiz talks choice because he doesn’t like the choice made by Apple. It sounds like wishful thinking by Ruiz; Apple made the right choice with Intel. Still, anything can happen and, with Apple, it often does.
Looks line MDN has a clear vision of the future….. A crystal ball perhaps??? As many may recall there was a time Intel was lagging AMD and this probably will happen again in future. As long as there’s innovation, these AMD and Intel will swap positions in being the leading company.
Right now Apple needs to have the top processors, and Intel has them, AMD doesn’t. If AMD catches up or passes Intel, then Apple may look to them, but don’t hold your breath. It seems as if Apple and Intel have a good thing going, and are working together more closely than just Intel selling processors to Apple.
Apple didn’t “choose” to use only Intel forever.
AMD has done great things in the past, and they will again, and Apple CAN use them. Why be an Intel fanboy? Macs can use whatever’s best at the time. Right now it’s Intel. Someday it will be a mix of both. That is a GOOD thing. We should all hope for AMD to do amazing things.
Having two chip suppliers is MUCH better than having one. Just thing where Apple’s pro towers would have been with only Motorola and no IBM! Yet before that, Moto had the G4 which gave us the fastest computers in the world at one time.
What Ruiz says makes sense to me.
Is it just me, or does this guy sound like every other Glaser-like wanna-be that’s said, “Oh, yeah. Apple’s gonna want to and need to do business with us”, along with a carefully placed use of the “c-word” (choice)?
This guy is full of crap. Apple is not Dell. I know that Apple is gonna give me the best processor for the job.
By the way, where is my MBP with C2D?
MDN Magic Word “living”, as in: How do these guys make a “living” coming up with this crap?
Interesting that the CEO of AMD would deem it necessary to make such a statement.
Does he believe that Apple is on the move upward and will be a major alternative to Windows.
Very interesting.
I have nothing against AMD but I think Apple made the right choice at this point in time. Intel seems to be on an innovative track for the first time in a long time, and it shows in the performance of their Core line.
The one thing about Apple that puts AMD at a disadvantage is that since SJ came back, Apple has been all about paring down their lines. Using two brands of similar processors doesn’t really go with that plan. You could argue that they already did that with IBM producing the G5 and Motorola/Freescale the G4 but that’s not really the same thing because of the AIM alliance.
Time will tell, but if AMD wants Apple (which they obviously do) they’re gonna really have to stay innovative.
I’m sure Apple, like any other company in the space, keeps tabs and is privy to roadmap details unavailable to mere mortals. AMD has had their 15 minutes of fame at the expense of Intel. As long as Intel remains focused, I doubt that AMD will ever seriously leapfrog them again in critical technology.
It’s nice to know that if AMD should develop an amazing earth-shattering chip that eclipses anything offered by Intel, Apple could most likely use it.
With an announcement like that, Steve Jobs probably WON’T use AMD processors until AMD does some serious groveling first.
Thing is people give less of a crap nowadays about which processor they have than they do about security and usability.
You all think they do but the people who give a crap about the uber geek details probably make up less than 5 % of the market. Most people just want something that works.
i could be totally wrong here but doesn’t AMD not have fab labs? they contract out production of their chips to IBM?
Apple might switch back to Motorolla
I made you laugh, good.
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Apple gets a lot more from Intel than just processors and it’s the total package that is the best deal. Intel has provided a lot of motheroboard engineering that has helped Apple get the switch to happen much more quickly. Intel has all the supporting chipsets too, one stop shopping for parts and engineering. Plus Intel is hungry for success. They’ve been tied to Microslop OS and third rate box assemblers like Dell for too long. Apple is doing something fresh and so is Intel.
Apple don’t need no stinking AMD.
Ruiz seems to be implying that Apple will offer customers a choice of Intel or AMD processor (since merely switching to AMD wouldn’t expand the choices). They have never offered that kind of choice before, so I can’t see them doing it now. It goes against their whole philosophy of not overwhelming the user/customer with unnecessary decisions. (Yes, they had IBM and Motorola chips, but never as an option in the same product line.)
Despite popular opinion that choice is always good, studies have shown that choices can have a negative impact on sales. In the book _Blink_, there is mention of a study in which a woman sold jelly at a stand. When she had a dozen flavors to choose from, she sold less than when she only had 3 or 4 choices.
AMD sells a processor. Intel sells a platform…
AMD…not anytime soon. Apple & Intel are doing great together. And Apple is getting tons of additional credibility (in the Windows world) having its name tied to Intel. AMD is a great company and it is good to have them push Intel. However, I see no advantage ot using AMD chips at this time.
As someone else alluded to, even having AMD say that they would like to have Apple’s business must be a good thing, and bid well, for Apple.
Intel is known to screw good things up, so who knows…
The only thing apple needs is an SLI rig, and they can do that with nvidia, and intel.. so unless AMD has soemthing up their sleeve they are gonna be hurting, and soemhting tells me they dont have anything up their sleeve..
SHUT YOUR STUPID MAC FACES!
What is the future for Intel processors? The two top of the line processors from Intel is Itanium and C2D. Will they unite in the future? It sounds very plausible to me now that C2D is a 64-bit processor. Itanium cannot run 32-applications natively – they need an emulation layer. The decrease in speed may not be noticeably because the speed of an Itanium processor is aproximately twice as fast as the C2D processor. In addition, I would believe that most major application will be recompiled to run optimally on a 64-bit processor.
The next generation processor architecture, nehalem, from Intel, is not very different from the architexture used in the present C2D processors and I therefore presume that we cannot expect any major speed avantage other than that they are moving to 45nm technology.
I don’t knot what the future brings from AMD, but they haven’t moved to 65nm technology yet and it sounds to me that they could have a major advantage over Intel because their 90nm technology can compete with intel’s 65nm technology?
If Intel focused on one architecture they may give os faster processors faster?
Guys, just because you enjoy sucking Steve’s shlong that doesn’t mean you have to toady to every supplier Apple uses.
There is no way that it works out bad for us that AMD is out there or that AMD wants Apple’s business.
On AMD’s worst day they still keep Intel prices lower, so that even if Apple is Intel all-the-way they still reap the benefit of price competition, which ultimately we reap as well. Also on AMD’s worst day they keep Intel’s development cycle and release cycle in overdrive, which carries the sames benefits.
Anyone that want to explain to me how it could in any way be a bad thing that Intel is encouraged to release better processors at lower prices?
On AMD’s best day it releases processors that are faster and cheaper than Intels. It has happened plenty before, and there’s no reason it can’t happen again. On that day, is there any reason Apple shouldn’t go for the faster, cheaper chips?
There is no logical reason anyone who doesn’t have stock in Intel or work for Intel should be posting “Gosh, Intel is great” posts. The great part about using commodity components is that Apple can use whoever offers the most bang for the buck at a given moment.
AMD has a totally solid product. I would love for Apple to consider AMD, especially for their Xserve line.
A little shameless promotion: If you want to find out what AMD has been up to lately, you should check out AMD’s virtual tradeshow – http://virtualexperience.amd.com – where execs from AMD and a few of AMD’s partners talk about the innovative stuff they’re doing. My company, Design Reactor, made it for them, and it’s been getting a lot of public interest. Definitely pretty cool.
Since I made all of you, and you cannot predict the future like I can…I’ll tell you this:
God likes his G5. Why? Because its not Intel or AMD. But, being God, I often have to appease the masses, and let them get what they want. Therefore, I allowed Apple to move to Intel. But asking me to make the switch to the crappy AMD processors is like asking me to play on the “Hell’s Angels” softball team.
Not gonna happen.
Long live the G’s. Just because.