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Will Apple Computer Eat Intel’s Marketing Apple?

Will Apple Promote “Intel Inside”?

by Anton Shilov

[ 12/16/2005 | 11:56 PM ]

Apple Computer has been popular among its fans and only recently users of Wintel computers started to demand Macintosh machines inspired by the iPod music players. In the coming year Apple will launch new computers that are based on processors from Intel Corp. and will be able to put the “Intel Inside” logotype on its machines, advertise them along with the same trade-mark and get additional marketing funds from Intel Corp. The question is whether Apple is going to do this.

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For every Intel chip a computer company buys, it gets some cash back, calculated as a percentage of its ad budget. While it may sound as not a lot, for a company that sells many computers this results in significant sums that may be spent on advertising again, which pushes sales up again resulting in higher sums and even more ads. It was Toshiba executives who made reference to the addictive nature of the subsidies, according to an antitrust lawsuit filed by Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices.

Will Apple Computer, which already spends quite a lot on promotion of its products, become a part of Intel’s marketing machine and also advertise Macintosh computers in conjunction with Intel’s brand? Some think that no.

“I have a hard time envisioning a scenario under which it would. The thought of Apple slapping ‘Intel Inside’ emblems on a Powerbook strikes me as so antithetical to the Steve Jobsian sense of aesthetics that it’s laughable,” suggested Businessweek’s columnist Arik Hesseldahl.