Intel's Monopoly Profits

What do you do when your marketing department doesn’t have any appealing product to promote? One option is to spend your advertising money attacking the competition. At least for AMD, they believe this is a wise thing to do. It's hard to blame them when the slogan "best value" doesn't really appeal to anyone. The latest “Intel is a monopoly” assault from AMD came in the form of a report from one of its financial consulting firm cleverly disguised as an independent economic report. The bottom line is that AMD paid Dr. Michael Williams to make a supposedly damning case against Intel so it is hard to put weight on this study. But it makes for an interesting read if you're the kind that likes to read stories you already know how it ends.

To sum up the report, it says that Intel has profited ($60B) from its dominant position since 1996. AMD and ERS prefer to describe Intel's profit during the intense growth years as "monopoly profits". Nevermind the fact that Intel was trying to supply a rapidly expanding internet while AMD was busy reverse engineering Pentiums. The free market economy has a built in system that rewards ingenuity and leadership. Is AMD and ERS trying to convince us that making healthy profits from a technological or financial advantage is illegal? The idea that dominant companies should be stifled and disadvantaged sounds exactly the opposite of what free and open competition should be.

The ERS report continues to say that consumers and computer manufacturers will save $81B over the next decade if the gates of free competition are opened. The report appears straightforward enough and makes an awful lot of sense from an economic theory point of view. Free market competition does benefit the consumers. But that theory does not address the simple fact that AMD and Intel is a duopoly in the PC microprocessor market and that there are economic and technological barriers that prohibit anyone from competing. The quick entrance and exit of Transmeta can only demonstrate the likelihood that there won’t be more than 2 (significant) players in this industry.

To some degree it will never be a truly free market as supply creation is limited to a few players. Market forces never really played a primary role in the last several years to determine processor pricing. It was in fact the level of supply Intel was willing to commit capital into and how quickly the PC vendors and suppliers can build systems. The only time the forces of supply and demand kicked in is when AMD built its 2nd Fab where supply outpaced demand. Notice how margins quickly dropped as both companies had no choice but to keep lowering their prices .

But anyone hoping for a free and open competition can only expect disappointment. When Intel stopped offering rebates, AMD started struggling with massive loses and execution problems as it is quite obvious they miscalculated Intel’s response by a long shot. AMD would be an interesting economic case study of how a free and open market destroys a company engaged in business that requires high margins and quick capital turnovers. One can argue that when Intel was making "monopoly" profits, keeping higher margins, it was allowing a poorly managed AMD to survive.

Overall the study is nothing but another attempt by AMD to throw attention at its competitor and away from its failures and missteps. The irony of it all is in fact what AMD was wishing for; a free and open market, is the very thing that is causing them $2Billion in annual loses.


New Economic Study Finds Intel Extracted Monopoly Profits of $60 Billion Since 1996

Also Finds Consumers and Computer Manufacturers Could Gain Over $80Billion from Full Competition in Microprocessor Market

SUNNYVALE, CALIF., August 2 /CNW/ - A new economic study issued today by Dr. Michael A. Williams, Director, ERS Group, found that Intel has extracted monopoly profits from microprocessor sales of more than $60 billion in theperiod 1996-2006. Dr. Williams' analysis explains why pro-competitive justifications for Intel's monopoly profits are implausible. Williams also found that consumers and computer manufacturers could gainover $80 billion over the next decade if the microprocessor market were open to competition. The analysis noted that consumers would save at least $61billion over the period, with computer manufacturers projected to save another $20 billion, enabling them to increase their investment in R&D create improved products and greater product variety; and provide additional innovationb enefits to computer buyers around the world.
The ERS Group is an economic and financial consulting firm retained byAMD's outside counsel, O'Melveny & Myers LLP. - Aha! A Clue.