Intel, AMD Slash Mobile Prices

Intel kicked off its fourth quarter by slashing prices on high-end models of its Centrino mobile-processing lineup. Intel's top rival, Advanced Micro Devices, followed suit.

The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker Tuesday chopped 30 percent off the price of its Centrino 755, reducing it to $495 from $709. The Centrino 755 offers 2 Mbytes of L2 cache, a 2GHz processor and a 400MHz FSB. The pricing is based on 1,000-unit quantities and is retroactive to Oct. 17.

Price cuts in the Centrino lineup ranged from 30 percent on the high end to 10 percent on the 1.6GHz Centrino offering. Prices were also reduced on some Intel stand-alone Pentium M processors.

Rival AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., also significantly cut pricing on its mobile lineup. AMD lowered the price of its top-selling Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor 3400+ to $243 from $432, for example. Prices are also based on 1,000-unit quantities.

"For Intel, they would rather push more mobile [solutions] because they are dominating mobile," said David Chang, president of Agama Systems, a Houston-based system builder. "And not just the processors, but the motherboard, chipset, everything. This way, they can extend their lead on AMD."

While custom-system builders have increased their share of the notebook market over the past year, Chang said, branded vendors such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell maintain the lion's share and are more likely to absorb any margin declines accompanying price cuts.