AMD tries to reverse low corporate PC sales

AMD is trying to improve its sales record in the corporate desktop and laptop market with a new triple-core processor and longer support cycles for PC processors, the company announced Monday.

AMD's guarantee is to continue building and supporting seven Phenom and Athlon processor models for up to 24 months, compared with the previous length of 18 months or less.

Intel's equivalent desktop and laptop product line advertises a 12-month deployment period, but is deployed in far greater numbers than AMD's.  

Not having a longer lifespan guarantee is one of the things that has kept AMD's market share low compared with Intel's, says AMD marketing manager Teresa de Onis.

AMD is offering an 18 month-lifespan for a 780V chipset used in conjunction with its Athlon and Phenom processors. The AMD processors include the triple-core Phenom X3 8600B, the only totally new product in the bunch. New corporate PCs with AMD processors are also being announced by HP, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens and Acer.

AMD isn't matching the chip performance of Intel but could gain more deployments in enterprises with the longer product life span, says Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds. Enterprises will be able to keep computers for longer periods without significantly increasing support costs.

But the impact won't be too great because the life span of corporate desktops isn't as big an issue for enterprises as it was several years ago, he says. Windows 2000 and XP are less sensitive to platform changes than Windows 95 was, and OEM vendors over the last several years started to shield business customers from quick turnaround cycles by sticking with older chipsets longer than Intel and AMD recommended.

"It's a proposition that has value to customers," Reynolds says of the newly announced 24-month life span. "It's not as valuable as it was some years back, but it's still interesting."

While AMD has about 20% market share when all business and consumer products are counted, Reynolds said AMD's market share of corporate desktops is probably in the single digits.

AMD is also extending the warranty on the products to three years instead of one.

The seven processors include one single-core, four two-cores, a quad-core and the new triple-core Phenom X3 8600B. Triple-core gives customers an extra core for some of the new multi-threaded applications, while not costing as much as quad-core, de Onis notes.