Summary

Intel is facing adversity from the low-end up to the high-end of its current desktop roadmap. At the midrange, Intel still appears to plan on withholding some of the features demanded by the market in order to sustain adequate product differentiation between the P3 and P4. This leaves a significant competitive opening for third party chip set vendors to deliver mainstream P3 UMA DDR chip sets with AGP upgrade options.

At the high-end, Intel faces nagging doubts about P4 performance and platform pricing issues, not to mention stiff competition from highly anticipated Athlon + DDR systems. The RDRAM credit program may help to offset some of the pain of expensive Rambus systems, however price increases by DRAM manufacturers, and 800MHz RDRAM availability limitations could weaken an otherwise successful P4 volume ramp. Regardless, Willamette is an important first step in what appears to be a strong 2001 high-end strategy for Intel once Northwood and Brookdale are in place.

Report reproduced courtesy of: InQuest Market Research

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