This article blames fierce competition from Intel for AMD’s current woes. I think that’s charitable – my view is AMD screwed itself through a number of bad decisions, most prominent being turning their backs on the people who got AMD where it is today.

AMD has been a low-end alternative to Intel products for thirty years. When the home-built PC market exploded it was AMD chips that enthusiasts turned to over Intel for price as well as performance. The market for AMD’s product has, for most of its life, been individuals and not corporations.

Then, in 2003, when AMD began to seriously challenge Intel they did something interesting. AMD focused their efforts into producing high end chips while jacking their prices up to match or even exceed those of Intel. Regardless of whether or not this price jacking was justified, the crowd that had supported AMD through the decades of its existence was left in the cold.

Home users simply had no need for the (admittedly good) processors that AMD was churning out, especially not at the prices that were being charged. Of course businesses, the target market for the new processors, liked the chips but it appears that AMD underestimated the power of institutional momentum. Companies in long-term contracts with Intel were loath to do something to threaten their relationships there. AMD did well in the server space but not nearly well enough to offset the flight of customers they saw in their lower-end market, a market that Intel stole right out from under AMD with the new Core architecture chips.

So yeah, AMD got hit with some tough competition but let’s not give too much credit to Intel – AMD handed Intel their customers on a silver platter.