Dramatic effect
Once again AMD has dominated the news this week, even when its much larger rival Intel launched the long awaited Centrino 2 notebook platform and announced record second quarter earnings. We all like a bit of drama, you see, and Intel making mountain ranges of money just isn’t dramatic enough.
The AMD drama actually started late last Friday, when it announced it was going to be taking a further $880 million hit against the value of its purchase of ATI a couple of years ago. Furthermore, the parts of the former ATI being written down were specifically the handheld and digital TV divisions. This led us to question the value of the ATI acquisition and wonder why there hadn’t been more calls for AMD CEO Hector Ruiz to be removed.
Well, the big Q2 loss was duly announced yesterday and so was the news that AMD was divesting the offending handheld and DTV divisions in order to try to sell them off. The big news, however, was that Ruiz was indeed going to relinquish the role of CEO and hand it over to his former right hand man, Dirk Meyer.
At the same time as all this was happening, we asked AMD what it thought of Centrino 2 and its VP of advanced marketing (as opposed to basic marketing? – Ed) told us that he wasn’t impressed by its graphics capabilities. Today, Intel’s UK PR manager Alistair Kemp responded by saying the Centrino 2 graphics were just fine and suggested AMD stick to talking about its own products. Miaow!
Actually, there was some nice drama from Intel in the form of further allegations from the European Commission that it had indulged in anti-competitive practices. Intel again denied the claims.