Bonum Certa Men Certa

A Gradual Fall of W|Intel... Thanks to OLPC?

It's down to margins, not quantity

Here's an article that seems innocent enough, but we do not link to it directly. In this article, Intel seems to be expressing regrets about its race to the bottom, notably sub-notebooks.

“The price-fixing era which the class action lawsuit has exposed is coming to an end.”As investors are probably aware, Intel's (and Microsoft's) stock sank sharply after Intel had issued warnings. It's not reassuring. My brother-in-law, who works at Intel, says the company no longer hires. And why? Well, the whole collusion around Vista may have something to do with this (remember that Ballmer will have been deposed by the end of the year). The price-fixing era which the class action lawsuit has exposed is coming to an end. To quote comments that are attached to the above article:

"The netbook concept is the proof that for most needs (e-mail, web and basic office work) a processor and platform like the Atom is more than enough. Vista has been a failure, GNU/Linux is still widely unknown to many people, and Apple is out of reach ($$$)."

(Full comment here)

"The message is still the same: Are you sure that you want something like this? And if you really are, would you be willing to wait until 'some time in the future' (when W7 is out) instead of buying one now (which might be running Linux)."

(Full comment here)

"This product has low margins, so we really wish people wouldn't buy them. And we really wish Asus had never been so dang insistent on . . . *competing* (horrid word) that they started selling them in the first place. We'd rather sell low-end chips than no chips at all so we'll keep on supplying, but this is all just too terribly awful for words."

(Full comment here)

Intel gave its wares to ASUS very cheaply in order to harm OLPC, among other reasons. It's spinning out of control at the moment (margins decline) and ARM is entering this race with superior chips that are simply not as 'porky' as Intel or Windows.

Notebook

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