Founder Leans to AMD. Check it out:
(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, October 02, 2006, SinoCast -- Founder Technology, the second largest PC brand in China's mainland, announced that it started to use microprocessors of AMD on September 28.
The US chipmaker on September 28 clinched a strategic agreement with Founder Technology, China's second-largest PC vendor, under which the Chinese computer maker is expected to launch AMD64 processor-based desktop PCs throughout China early next month.
Founder's decision to use AMD chips is seen as a major breakthrough for the US firm, with the world's second-largest chipmaker now trying to supply chips to all of China's major PC manufacturers.
"It is a milestone and an historic moment for AMD in China.
It is one more demonstration that industry and customers are increasingly seeing the value that our products offer," said Henri Richard, AMD's executive vice-president and chief sales and marketing officer.
In 2004, AMD began to cooperating with Lenovo, China's biggest and the world's third-largest computer maker, which uses AMD chips in 80 percent of its consumer desktop computers.
Earlier this year, AMD clinched a similar deal with Tsinghua Tongfang, China's third-largest computer manufacturer and the nation's second-largest home PC brand.
Tongfang has so far launched nine new commercial and consumer PC models based on AMD Athlon 64 X2, AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Sempron processors.
Dell Inc, the world's largest computer maker, announced in May that it would start using AMD microprocessors in some of its high-end servers, a major breakthrough for AMD, which had little presence in the server market until it released its Opteron processor in 2003.
AMD's Opteron Dual-Core processors will be offered in Dell's multiprocessor servers for the first time by the year's end. Dell previously relied exclusively on chips from AMD's larger rival, Intel Corp.
HP, the world's second-largest PC maker, already uses AMD chips in 60 percent of its consumer desktop computers sold in China.
Yesterday's agreement with Founder will begin with desktop systems and gradually expand to cover the notebook and server markets, Richard said, although he did not elaborate on when this would occur.
AMD has gained some ground in the consumer desktop computers and servers segments as it strives to catch up with archrival Intel.
But it still needs to make breakthroughs in the notebook and enterprise desktop computer segments, where most PC makers have yet to include AMD chips in their products.
The Founder-AMD alliance means that all the top domestic PC makers are using AMD chips in some of their models, which ends Intel's status as sole supplier to the country's PC industry, analysts said.
Founder plans to launch desktop computers with AMD central processing unit chips starting on Monday. The two companies will also expand cooperation into laptops and servers in the future, they said in a statement without revealing a date.
Founder, which produced 2.5 million computers in 2005, used only Intel CPU chips previously, and it will continue to use them in some models.
Dell Inc, the world's biggest PC vendor, also debuted AMD- based PCs two weeks ago in China. Lenovo Group Ltd and Tsinghua Tongfang, the No. 1 and No. 3 computer vendors, already use AMD chips.
Copyright 2006 Sinocast
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