AMD Turion 64 Strategy

With the introduction of its 64-bit enabled Turion 64 processor, AMD is looking to push its market share in the notebook-CPU segment to 12-15% in 2005, compared to the 5-8% share it had previously. AMD, together with a number of leading vendors, including HP, Acer, ASUS and PC distributors, will wage a promotional campaign worldwide on April 18 to promote the Turion 64-based notebooks. Vendors participating in the campaign will unveil new notebooks built using AMD Turion 64 2800+ and 3000+ CPUs, with power consumption averaging 25W or 35W, depending on models. Although AMD has set the prices of its Turion 64 CPUs about 13% cheaper, on average, than Intel’s Pentium M processors, some vendors have suggested that AMD needs to aggressively lower Turion 64 CPU prices to around 25% lower than P4 M CPUs, in order to gain market share from Intel. HP might raise the proportion of AMD-based notebooks to 50% of its total sales in 2005, from about 20-30% in 2004. Asustek plans to launch five or six AMD-based notebooks this year, compared to just one or two models launched a year previously.