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 According to the National Law Journal, Nvidia and AMD/ATI may be liable to a class action lawsuit charging them with price fixing. Without going too heavily into legal details, a Californian judge lent a very attentive ear to several plaintiffs that accuse the two GPU manufacturers of having falsified competition. This is notably due to an e-mail from Dan Vivoli to Dave Orton, respective Senior Marketing Vice President at Nvidia and the COO at ATI.
The extract of the message, which was made public, is relatively unclear (it mentions a collaboration on the marketing front as well as stock prices of the two companies that are too low) and taken out of context can be open to a number of interpretations. The problem is that defense lawyers are trying to keep other information confidential that could enable clarifying the situation and which are considered trade secrets.
Otherwise, the judge declared to the defense that, "This court is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of your companies. I am against you hiding information from the public.". While it may look rather bleak for the two giants, there are many points that remain unclear regarding what actually happened. In addition, they largely have the means to defend themselves and this type of procedure can be extremely long… |
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 Almost a year after sending a first formal complaint to Intel, the European Commission for Competition, has indicated that the company has received a second which reinforces and supports the first.
The main difference with this one is that the services of Nellie Croes, Commissioner for Competition, now accuse the Santa Clara firm of having given consubstantial price reductions to several OEMs on the condition that they do not purchase laptop CPUs from its rivals. In short, Intel supposedly put a lock on the laptop market.
The company now has eight weeks to send its response to authorities in Brussels and following this period they can respond orally to accusations. With the €16 million fine inflicted by South Korean trade authorities last month and the opening of an official investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, some are saying that this summer will be a hot one for the creator of x86... |
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AMD has published its 2nd quarter financial results for 2008 which ended June 28th. The figures given below are in millions of dollars:
 Compared to the same period a year ago, we can see that revenue increased slightly; however, the most noticeable are losses that have practically doubled. This can mainly be explained by a consecutive depreciation of $876 million related to the abandonment of certain activities involving portable devices and digital television. While gross profits on the balance sheet were 52%, this is mainly due to the sale of certain equipment for producing 200mm wafers. Without this, it would have only been 37% versus 41% for the first quarter and 34% between March and June of 2007. Otherwise, note that income from its graphic division was $248 million. There were several new and interesting developments such as the Radeon HD 4800 and Puma platform which were launched in the second quarter; however, we should keep in mind that they were only introduced in June and will therefore especially contribute to increasing revenue in the following quarters – if everything goes well. Assuming that these products will be exempt from exceptional costs and the transition to 45nm will not be delayed, we can be hopeful the Sunnyvale company will have relatively balanced accounts (in the same proportions) meaning they will necessarily be out of the red in the short term. |
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 AMD has just announced that its board of directors has elected Dirk Meyer, the current Chief Operating Officer, to the post of Chief Executive Officer. In reality, this means that the firm’s no. 1, Hector Ruiz, who has held this position since April 2002, will remain active although as Executive Chairman and President of the board of directors. This will enable a smooth transition all the while keeping the focus on the company’s asset smart strategy.
While the succession is no surprise in itself (it has been planned for some time), it was not expected so soon. AMD’s stock attaining historical lows these last few days is probably not unrelated. While Intel’s rival owes some success to its former CEO, it will be difficult (especially for stockholders) to forget the high price it paid to acquire ATI and the strategy that was then put into place.
This has now been reduced to a series of depreciations and a significant debt load without really bringing any concrete results (besides maybe a few chipsets). Moreover, there is little chance that it will change in the short term. The lack of competition on the high end is starting to be felt and we can only wish the new CEO good luck... |
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