Once a indestructable empire which controled the technological throne, Intel has sank to a point which they must lower the prices of their revelutionary chip, the Pentium, to once again draw their once faithful customers.
Although no formal statement has been made, inside sources informed the Netpicker's Advocate that Intel is suffering from decreasing sales because of stiff competition, namely the Cyrix/IBM chip and the new high performance K6 MMX chip from AMD.
Because of this, Intel has desperately done something they haven't done in a long while-- lower their prices.
This is not the first time a large corporate technological manufacturer had to decrease their prices due to shortage of sales. Last year, Packard Bell had to lower their prices because their computer were not selling. IBM also had to cut prices as well. The sales for Deep Blue's new AMBRA and their high end computers were lackluster.
The price for holding a "monopoly" to a market is the threat of competition. Before these clone companies, which started to introduce "less for more" clone chips, Intel was the only manufacturer of Computer processors, and they can charge as much as they want for their chips. After the competition entered the market, Intel began to sweat, and thought about lowering prices, but they didn't because they were confident of their position and their image of the "only processor provider." Intel lost its grip around the computer market as soon as the competition started to introduce their new, imporved, and cheaper clone chips.
Intel has suffered a decline in sales every year after the competition showed up, although their profits remained the same because their chips were expensive. Now, the public is slowly losing interest in the products Intel is making, despite the new, innovative "disco-ed" commercials. Intel's reputation is now starting to turn for the worse.
Why you ask? Well, the public is fed up with the prices they pay on the "high performance" and "original" chips Intel makes. When the market is full of cheaper, better processors, the consumer tends to lean towards the latter.
Thanks to the competition, Intel has finally woken from their eternal slumber and smelled the coffee. Even though Intel is lowering prices, don't expect a sharp increase in sales. The public is willing to test out their chips to see if the quality has degraded due to these price drops, and the general public needs to reaffirm their trust in Intel before buying their products.
My advice, start or keep buying the competition's products, that includes stocks as well. We need to bring Intel back into reality. They will have to earn our business, not the other way around. The public will not fall to this injustice.