European Commission fines Intel $1.45 billion
- Thread starter v_rr
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Press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressRelease...5&type=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
What is the mapping of A,B,C D to Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC?
What is the mapping of A,B,C D to Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC?
Sound_Card
Regular
It would be kind of bogus if AMD does not get some of it for potential losses.
AFAIK they won't get a penny out of it. They'll hopefully get a more fair marketplace in the near future though.
Nope, AMD gets nothing, it is a fine and not compensation or damages. The money will go into the EU budget and will be used to lower this year's EU membership contributions by the member states.
Sound_Card
Regular
Thats pretty lame then. Though, perhaps as pointed out, the market should be more fair for them.
The argument of the commission goes as follows: European consumers (i.e. tax payers) paid the price for the violation of anti-trust laws, so they should get an indirect refund by lowering their states' contribution, albeit only temporary.
AMD should profit from a fairer market. If they want compensation they'd have to sue Intel, but my knowledge on whether or not a law suit would be possible, much less successful is very limited, not to say non-existant
The problem is though, in principle, it's difficult to argue that these anti-competitive behaviors hurts AMD only. For example, if AMD is compensated, VIA may also claim that they should be compensated too.
Where is Intel saying this? I'm just curious. Not that I disbelieve or anything. I just haven't heard that yet.
if anything, the EC can only argue that consumers MIGHT pay too much in future, if Intel manages to drive AMD out of business by the practices deemed illegal. Even that might be questionable, as ARM might turn out to be a bigger competitor to Intel than AMD in 5 years.
If AMD does not go belly up, then it is next to impossible to estimate the effect to consumer prices of CPUs due to the effect of Intel's practices.
It should be much easier to judge the effect on AMD's profitability though
In the official press release:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20090513corp.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20090513r
Intel said:
The argument of the commission goes as follows: European consumers (i.e. tax payers) paid the price for the violation of anti-trust laws, so they should get an indirect refund by lowering their states' contribution, albeit only temporary.
AMD should profit from a fairer market. If they want compensation they'd have to sue Intel, but my knowledge on whether or not a law suit would be possible, much less successful is very limited, not to say non-existant
In fact AMD has in fact filed a antitrust lawsuit against Intel.
http://news.cnet.com/AMD-files-antitrust-suit-against-Intel/2100-1001_3-5765844.html
AMD benefits by getting evidence gather by the European Commission for their own lawsuit.
This is a pretty subtle case. On the one hand, it's difficult to show Intel did anything conclusively illegal, on the other, there's a lot of formal statements by vendors against Intel so they're obviously none too happy with its behavior, and apparently Intel has done quite a bit to conceal its anti-competitive behavior too:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/14/technology/parloff_intel.fortune/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
The conclusion of this article isn't particularly neutral, but it does present both sides of the case pretty well. Intel shouldn't be punished if it indeed do nothing but innovate for the consumer's good, but it's clear from past anti-trust cases and current evidence that one can be anti-competitive using very indirect methods.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/14/technology/parloff_intel.fortune/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
The conclusion of this article isn't particularly neutral, but it does present both sides of the case pretty well. Intel shouldn't be punished if it indeed do nothing but innovate for the consumer's good, but it's clear from past anti-trust cases and current evidence that one can be anti-competitive using very indirect methods.
Another thing to point out. It wasn't just AMD who suffered from this. Nvidia, Via also got shafted by some of the things Intel has been doing. Heck intel was doing it to ION ((which got noted in this case)) which is fairly recent.
Don't care what you say/or feel. Nobody deserves to be knocked off the market because of things like this. If Nvidia deserves it. So does AMD and Via because its a free market AMIRIGHT?! I'm sure you'll reply with "But Nvidia does bad things too! So that makes it ok!". There is no such thing as "two wrongs make a right". If there was. Then every vendor in this market would be game for this kind of practice.
The point is everyone here lost out. Theres no justification for what was done/stated in this trial.
The point is everyone here lost out. Theres no justification for what was done/stated in this trial.