Intel pays $6.5 million in New York antitrust case
Ottelini's got good reason to smile: the New York antitrust case has cost Intel a mere three hours' profit.
In the 2009 lawsuit, Cuomo accused Intel of a 'systematic worldwide campaign' of anticompetitive activities including, but not limited to, massive subsidies, incentives and kickbacks totalling billions of dollars if customers chose Intel chips over rival processors from the likes of AMD.
When the carrot didn't work, Cuomo claimed Intel turned to the stick. For manufacturers who refused to play ball and chose to stock machines with non-Intel processors, prices were suddenly hiked and stock constrained so as to put a squeeze on shipment times and margins.
The lawsuit originally looked for triple damages calculated over a period of four to six years. Sadly for New York's coffers, Judge Leonard Stark limited the claim to standard damages and a three-year period. As a result, the settlement has come to a mere $6.5 million.
Okay, so that might sound like a lot, but let's put it into perspective: the company's profits for 2011 totalled $12.9 billion. As a result, the $6.5 million settlement shaves a mere 0.05 per cent off that total. To put it another way, the company has lost just over three hours' profit.
Additionally, the terms of the settlement mean that Intel has been able to end the lawsuit without having to admit wrongdoing. As a result, if anyone else feels like having a go at Intel they won't be able to use this case as evidence of monopolistic activities.
This isn't the first time Intel's been slapped over its allegedly anticompetitive nature. Back in 2009, the European Union hit the company with a £948 million fine for the self same activities of which Cuomo complained.
At the time, competition commissioner Neelie Kroes claimed that 'Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years. Such a serious and sustained violation of the EU's antitrust rules cannot be tolerated.'
The state of New York has indicated its displeasure with such a lightweight punishment for Intel, especially given the prior weight of the EU's fine, but has declared that it won't be contesting the ruling.
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Discuss in the forums Replythey probably pay out more in parking fines than that is worth to them
You wouldn't love Intel so much if you were fired from the company you were working hard for because of cut-backs due to Intel's illegal business practices, or does your simple mindedness prevent you from liking a product at the same time as understanding the process by which it arrived on your desktop and to empathise with those companies who were made to suffer as a result.
Idiot.
Alas AMD has been knocked back from the glory days of the Athlon 64, Intel can charge anything they want for the top end chips and there profits show this, and its us the consumer thats suffering for it. Also yes i know this lawsuit dates back to before the Athlon 64, but with more money AMD could have potentially advertised more, and got more system builders on board with lower prices, maybe more people would have bought them instead of those awful extreme edition Intels running netburst, and AMD would be in a more healthy position now (again all conjecture).
Anyway enough ranting about what could have been, this lawsuit hasn't even scratched Intels profits, and i doubt theres anyone who cares about there uncompetitive practices in the past because they have the best chips, so Intel will carry on as if nothing happened.
i think its a shame it had to take this long for the lawsuit to complete. and sure $6.5 may be nothing for intel but at this point its more than just the money. i think its too late though - intel's anti-competitiveness has pretty much etched their success in stone for future years.
Typical.
Capitalism does not extend to the use of illegal business tactics.
i assume you aren't aware of the several other amd vs intel lawsuits related to anticompetition? intel has been trying to snuff out amd for over a decade. considering that amd is like... 1/10th the size of intel, i'd say they're doing a REALLY good job, and i think people seem to forget that when you compare amd's financial situation vs their product releases to intel's they're kinda doing a better job proportionally. if amd had intel's income for 1 year i'm sure they'd come out with something better than w/e ivy bridge will be.
You assume correct mate & absolutely for the budget difference between intel & AMD, I'd say AMD are absolutely badass at what they do, this isn't a fanboy move it's choosing a very smart & strong underdog who has been losing out to a wealthy bully. :)
Colour me red & call me an AMD fanboy now then if you wish, I don't care. :D My first few PC's were AMD based also, I can bare a slightly underperforming rig until they start beating the crap out of intel on performance, if people support AMD it won't take them long I bet. :)
well, there's a point where getting the most high-end stuff doesn't even benefit you anymore. i still have an overclocked athlon II x3 that i use for gaming and i still have yet to utilize 100% of it (although, my HD5750 might be a bottleneck). i considered getting a phenom x6 but i haven't found a need to. so why should i care to pay so much more for an 8-threaded cpu? i rarely do super-cpu intensive tasks such as movie encoding, and even if i did, i don't need the extra few seconds.
that's like fining Bill Gates $10 for a parking ticket
Capitalism does encompass the choice of doing business with said company or not. If you believe Intel isnt the best choice, take your business to AMD or ARM.
Are you being deliberately simple-minded? You can't build desktops on ARM (especially back when Intel was at their worst in this regard.) Had one of the major OEMs bailed on Intel (HP, for example), Intel would have turned around and financed a massive ad campaign for every other OEM to pile on HP for not using Intel's 'superior processors' (depending on the generation, that may or may not have been true) and cut advertising kick-ins (I can't recall the exact term, but it goes on in every industry.)
Do you think it's that Intel is so much more exciting that the chain store ads feature Intel-based machines almost exclusively? No, it's Intel kicking in dollars in advertising to the OEMs. Even companies that aren't hurting for money aren't going to turn down free money from a vendor, in exchange for meeting some conditions. Those conditions being, back in the bad old days, "don't buy AMD", or "AMD can't be more than x% of machines you build". Obviously, AMD can't kick in nearly what Intel could, so they get relegated to the low-end machines in the ads to draw in the lower-end segment.
It's dumbass, simpleton attitudes like yours that are turning capitalism into the unholy mess it is now. (Doubly true for west's comment, as well.)
Do you not understand what capitalism promotes? Its CONSUMER CHOICE.
And what exactly does consumers choosing to buy AMD over Intel, and actually ARM is getting into desktop with W8 and currently can be bought for servers, have anything to do with OEMs? If customers buy more AMD processor based products, AMD's market grows and Intel's shrinks. No OEM has to "drop Intel" even if more people select AMD based products..
Nice job trying to refute people have choice in what they purchase, guess you support communism?
That does not apply to this particular case, simply put, the cases regarding Intel supposedly blocking the use of AMD Cpus date back to the time when AMD had a competitive product with K8, what everyone seems to forget is that AMD could not even keep the demand for K8 satisfied, imagine the stock problems they would have had if Dell, HP, Acer and so on had ordered K8 by the truckload.
It takes years to build new fabs, point being that by the time AMD would have had sufficient production capacity Conroe would have been released anyway.
Actually because of Intels tactics during that period, AMD couldn't move a few million units they held in reserve for big companies like dell and others. Stock that ended had to be heavily discounted and be sold to third parties, because the original customers had cold feet and decided not to buy the chips they ordered
You are missing the point. The original commenter "West" stated that Intel is dominated the market, da. Why? because people buy their products. They couldnt be where they are if we the consumer didnt vote who we want to dominate the market with our wallets. Intel can only open fabs if they have the money, give to them buy the consumers. Consumers being OEMs who only order processors based off demand, and builders like us posting on this site. If AMD was given the amount of business back then that was given to Intel the market would be entirely flipped around and AMD would have more fabs, and Intel probably wouldnt have had the money to design Conroe.
Would we the customer take notice if AMD was doing the same thing? idk. Probably. If Intel had smaller marketshare then AMD and tried this, would we be complaining? probably not as most people would be saying the same thing we do with AMD now since AMD is the "little guy."
If you want to get AMD's marketshare to grow and have the money to open more Fabs, buy AMD processors and get people to buy OEM products with AMD inside.
The market, business cycles, and a capitalistic society determines what businesses live, die, and grow by those who use their money to buy a company's products.
Implying those reasons are the reasons why i love intel implying you understand my comment which was actually sarcastic implying you have the right to call me an idiot The only idiot here is you don't just go round insulting people.