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AMD's Ruiz: Intel continues to abuse monopoly

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit

SAN FRANCISCO--Hector Ruiz, chairman and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, said Intel has continued to intimidate the PC industry by abusing its monopoly power in the months since AMD filed an antitrust lawsuit.

"Monopolies, at all costs, must protect their market share to protect their business models," Ruiz said at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club in downtown San Francisco Wednesday evening. AMD alleged in June 2005 that Intel has used the selective distribution of marketing funds and rebates to illegally entice PC companies into excluding AMD from their products, a charge Intel has denied.

Ruiz said Intel has continued to make "outright payments" to its customers in order to persuade them to keep AMD out of their products. He noted that until recently, AMD was largely shut out of the commercial desktop market, alluding to Intel's market power as the reason for that position.

Intel has said many times that it has done nothing wrong, and reiterated that stance Wednesday evening. "Our business practices are lawful," said Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman.

AMD has steadily gained market share since it filed the antitrust lawsuit, despite its claims that Intel is holding it back. Ruiz pointed to Intel's revenue share of the processor market, rather than its unit share, as the basis for his charges. Intel takes in 80 percent of the revenue from sales of x86 processors, even though it has a somewhat smaller unit share of the market, he said.