Intel Corporation’s dominance of the microprocessor market and its aggressive business practices may limit our ability to compete effectively.
Intel Corporation has been the market share leader for microprocessors for many years. Intel’s market share, margins and significant financial resources enable it to market its products aggressively, to target our customers and our channel partners with special incentives and to influence customers who do business with us. These aggressive activities have in the past and are likely in the future to result in lower unit sales and a lower average selling price for many of our products and adversely affect our margins and profitability.
Intel exerts substantial influence over computer manufacturers and their channels of distribution through various brand and other marketing programs. As a result of Intel’s position in the microprocessor market, Intel has been able to control x86 microprocessor and computer system standards and benchmarks and to dictate the type of products the microprocessor market requires of us. Intel also dominates the computer system platform, which includes core logic chipsets,graphics chips, networking devices (wired and wireless), non-volatile storage and other components necessary to assemble a computer system. Additionally, Intel's able to drive de facto standards and specifications for x86 microprocessors that could cause us and other companies to have delayed access to such standards.
Intel has substantially greater financial resources than we do and accordingly spends substantially greater amounts on marketing and research and development than we do. We expect Intel to maintain its market position and to continue to invest heavily in marketing, research and development, new manufacturing facilities and other technology companies. To the extent Intel manufactures a significantly larger portion of its microprocessor products using more advanced process technologies, or introduces competitive new products into the market before we do, we may be more vulnerable to Intel’s aggressive marketing and pricing strategies for microprocessor products.
As long as Intel remains in this dominant position, we may be materially adversely affected by Intel’s:
•business practices, including rebating and allocation strategies and pricing actions, designed to limit our market share and margins;
•product mix and introduction schedules;
•product bundling, marketing and merchandising strategies;
•exclusivity payments to its current and potential customers, retailers and channel partners;
•de facto control over industry standards, and heavy influence on PC manufacturers and other PC industry participants, including motherboard, memory,chipset and basic input/output system (BIOS) suppliers and software companies as well as the graphics interface for Intel platforms; and
•marketing and advertising expenditures in support of positioning the Intel brand over the brand of its original equipment manufacturer OEM customers and retailers.
Intel could also take actions that place our discrete GPUs at a competitive disadvantage, including giving one or more of our competitors in the graphics market, such as Nvidia Corporation, preferential access to its proprietary graphics interface or other useful information. Also, Intel recently announced that it is developing their own high-end discrete GPUs. Intel’s position in the microprocessor market and integrated graphics chipset market, its introduction of competitive new products, its existing relationships with top-tier OEMs, and its aggressive marketing and pricing strategies could result in lower unit sales and a lower average selling price for our products, which could have a material adverse effect on us.
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I do believe they have the upper hand now.... I'm just eagerly awaiting the reviews for the newer CPUs from AMD... Very excited about it 
