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Sources Say EU Will Find Intel Anti-Competitive

@ 2009/05/11

the Commission will say Intel paid PC makers to delay or scrap the launch of products containing AMD chips. The Commission will characterize the payments as 'naked restrictions' to competition, the sources said. ... Intel set percentages of its own chips that it wanted PC makers to use, the sources said. For example, NEC Corp was told that 20 percent of its desktop and notebook machines could have AMD chips, the sources said. All Lenovo notebooks had to use Intel chips, as did relevant Dell products. The figure was 95 percent for Hewlett-Packard's business desktops, they said

Comment from wutske @ 2009/05/11

Banning products is too hard to acomplish. Paying a fine is easy, doesn't require any monitoring and it has immediate effect (there are enough Intel products in storage that can act as a buffer).

Comment from thorgal @ 2009/05/11

Banning Intel products would yield faster results to the problem, I think. On the other hand, a fine - if large enough (compared to the size of the business) - will also piss off the shareholders as their share values will decrease and their yearly coupon will be seriously lower.

Comment from wutske @ 2009/05/11

Indeed, you can't blame them for not knowing. It's the same when shops offer discounts when they aren't allowed, you can't blame customers for buying these products with discount (I know it's not exactly the same because these shops don't tell you not to buy stuff from another shop, but who will go to a shop that doesn't offer discounts and buy products when they can get a nice discount elsewhere ?)

Comment from jmke @ 2009/05/11

if resellers were being paid not the sell AMD CPUs I agree; but if Intel offers rebates which are illegal but the resellers don't know this, they can't be held responsible.

all this has nothing to do with EU/US/... it's about anti-monopoly tactics, which Intel and Microsoft are known to (have) employ(ed).

Comment from blackened @ 2009/05/11

My problem with this is since Intel was giving out all of these "illegal rebates", how come all the companies who actually received them are not facing any fines? Is it because they are European companies and the EU is only interested in leeching all the money it can from an American company with deep pockets? Not that it could ever happen, but I would love to see what would happen if Microsoft could take their proverbial ball and go home.

Comment from jmke @ 2009/05/11

Quote:

So the EU fines Intel.

Exactly who is paying the fine?

Uh, people buying Intel products. As such it means people all over the world will chip in their pennies to pay the EU for Intel's violation.

A better solution than taking money, banning their product for a set time. That is how you truly stop this type of anti competitive behavior. Fining them just means anyone buying the product has a new embedded tax. Locking them out gets the shareholders pissed and makes heads roll. Can you imagine the grief caused by having your major new processor line forbidden from sales? Suddenly vendors look elsewhere for product and possibly for future contracts because your past actions have now interfered with their business.

interesting approach

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