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October 24, 2001
The latest complaint was filed last week with Germany's Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt. In it, AMD claims that Intel made deals with German retailers that violate the country's competition laws.
The complaint was prompted by a report in the German edition of the Financial Times claiming that the Media Markt retail electronics chain had agreed to only sell computers that used Intel's processors in return for a payment from the chipmaker.
"AMD had already received similar information, so we decided to file a formal complaint with the Federal Cartel Office," AMD spokeswoman Hollis Krym explained.
A representative for the German Federal Cartel Office confirmed that a complaint had been received from "a competitor of Intel." It is now liaising with the European Commission, which is conducting its own investigation into Intel.
"We're checking with colleagues in Brussels to see whether they will take this complaint on as well," the Federal Cartel Office representative explained.
In June 2005, AMD filed a lawsuit against Intel, claiming that it had forced major customers to accept exclusive deals, and had withheld rebates and marketing subsidies from customers who bought more AMD processors than Intel had allowed.
The next month, European Commission officials raided Intel's offices in Swindon, England, as well as the offices of several PC retailers, including Dell.
Graeme Wearden of ZDNet UK reported from London.
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complaints over practices that one is not alien to. If a retailer, or
consumer was unhappy, then the suit would actually make sense.
AMD is losing its way really fast. But then, again, it is all a sign of
our times ... it don't look good right now.
The word from our vendors (Toshiba specifically) was that Intel was telling EVERYONE that if they supported AMD's new processor, that Intel would not supply them any of their own processors. This was at a time when Intel had something like 80%+ marketshare. It turns out that companies like Asus finally started releasing motherboards, but sold them out of white boxes, with no name branding whatsoever, to try to avoid Intel's wrath.
As a retailer, Best Buy was hurt by Intel's actions because they were unable to offer customers an available, less expensive, superior technology, as Intel had stifled the competition. I remember that Intel hadn't released anything faster than their Pentium III 500MHz part for almost a year. They didn't have to; they had their market under wraps and could (and did) charge whatever they wanted. THEY TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THEIR DOMINANT POSITION IN THE MARKETPLACE ILLEGALY.
As a consumer, I was hurt because I wanted to build a computer using AMD's much faster and cheaper processor but couldn't. Once AMD's parts became available, I swore off of Intel and have been building and buying AMD ever since.
AMD has every right to sue the pants off of Intel for this. I'm only wondering why they haven't done it sooner.
These anti-trust laws are there for a reason. If they are being violated, they need to be enforced. Intel would not hesitate a second if the situation were reversed.
This is the dark side of capitalism and one reason why it gets such a bad rap. It needs to stop.
I guess if you can't beat them on price and performance, then you can beat them with lawsuits.
waahh!!
Cry like a little baby.
What a bunch of whiners.
Nothing wrong with AMD's timing.
from the MicrSoft playbook! <wink>
AMD, stop acting like a big baby and make chips. We all know that anything goes in the third world and you are not an angel either. For corporate reasons, I?m sure that you hide your septic tank.