AMD Hires Bank to Arrange Sale or Pursue other Alternatives
A report from Reuters states that Advanced Micro Devices has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options, which could include a sale, as the chipmaker struggles to find a role in an industry increasingly focused on mobile and away from traditional PCs, according to three sources familiar with the situation. Sources told Reuters on Tuesday that an outright sale of the company is not a priority, and other options for AMD could include a sale of its portfolio of patents.
AMD said in an email to Reuters, "AMD's board and management believe that the strategy the company is currently pursuing to drive long-term growth by leveraging AMD's highly-differentiated technology assets is the right approach to enhance shareholder value. AMD is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time."
One of Silicon Valley's oldest chipmakers, AMD is laying off engineers and some analysts are concerned it may not find new markets for its chips in time to reverse a declining cash reserve.
AMD's shares have fallen more than 60 percent this year, giving it a market value of about $1.4 billion. It also has long-term debt and capital lease obligations of about $2 billion.
Microsoft Corp, Google Inc, Samsung Electronics, Intel Corp and even Facebook Inc have been suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors that could benefit from some of AMD's chip business, including its graphics division, PC processors and server chips.
Others say AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents.
Senior Member
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Ever since Core 2 Duo came up, Intel could already price their processors as they wished; AMD didn't really give meaningful competition aside from playing catch-up (much later).
If it weren't for ATi (a.k.a. their graphics division) and their Arab backers, I have no idea how AMD would have survived this long.
Intel will never price theirs to be too expensive because they do need to move the processors they manufactured.
Making it too expensive means less buyers thus less products going off the shelves, and (non-gamer) people will soon realize that even a low-end Sandy Bridge i5 is actually overkill for their needs.
Aside from gaming, folding, and rendering, which aren't exactly the majority of users will do, a measly i3 is enough.
Heck, even those Pentium Gs are enough.
What I'm afraid of isn't pricing, but rather a lack of innovation due to less competition.
But that'd probably be of no concern right now, because AMD has been off Intel's radar for awhile.
What Intel's been battling for some time is actually ARM.
ARM is what has been keeping Intel busy to push TDP down while maintaining/improving performance.
Senior Member
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AMD could just drop the CPU market, and instead start working on Havoc/physics a bit more. Nvidia is doing great in those areas - because they are exploring every possible rendering method.
And just to think, I was going to upgrade to an all AMD based system.
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I can pretty much guarantee Intel wont raise their prices anymore than they already are.
Senior Member
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Joined: 2004-09-04
IMO no, when one company controls the market, goverments create controls and such, thus limiting their price to a reasonable quantity.
While i don't want AMD to disappear, but IMO a weak AMD for the enthusiast market, its even worse. Just see what intel did with 2500K's, they are like 20€ more expensive than on release.
The Government may create controls and stuff, but they are useless at everything in general, let alone setting price levels.
They will set pricing levels based on what advice? At least direct competition is directing at attracting customers rather than having a legal obligation not to rip the customers off too much.
This is bad news regardless.
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Eep, not good.