Dell Gears Up to Sell AMD-Based Computers – Report

by Anton Shilov
11/20/2005 | 10:24 PM

Dell, the world’s largest maker of personal computers (PCs), is about to start building PCs with processors from Advanced  Micro Devices inside. According to Forbes, which cites Chinese-language news-paper Economic Daily News, Taiwanese manufacturers have already received orders for appropriate mainboards and other infrastructure.<%BANNER[article]%>

Dell has informed its Taiwan contract makers, such as ASUS, Foxconn and Quanta, of plans to develop devices based on AMD’s microprocessors, and these suppliers are awaiting orders for global shipment, it is reported. Foxconn, which belongs to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd develops AMD-powered servers, ASUS designs mainboards and Quanta Computer develops notebooks based on AMD microprocessors.

Historically Dell has been using microprocessors only from Intel Corporation. However, with the availability of AMD Athlon processors in 1999 and 2000, rumours about Dell’s presumable intentions to get AMD-based computers on the market became very intense, but the real condition of the things is that there are still no computers from Dell with AMD chips inside. As a major customer of Santa Clara, California-based Intel, Dell reportedly receives some favours from its main chip partner, therefore, this is quite natural for Dell not to use processors from other makers. Moreover, being a company concentrated mostly on corporate and SOHO markets Dell once said that the demand for AMD central processing units from its clients is not too strong.

Back in 2004 approximately 19% of Intel’s revenues came from Dell and about 16% from HP. No other computer makers accounted for more than 10%.