64-bit, the new mantra for AMD

The year 2003 will mark another victory for the world’s second largest microprocessor maker, AMD. Starting next quarter, the company will embark on the 64-bit computing wagon with the launch of its Opteron processor (for multi-processing, servers and workstations). The desktop/laptop version of the 64-bit chip (AMD Athlon 64) will be introduced later this year. Though this marks a shift from the company’s earlier roadmap for 64-bit, the company is confident of making deep inroads in the Indian market, which has been dominated by Intel so far. For AMD, India is one of the strategic focus areas along with China and Latin America.

In the past two years, the company has made significant achievements with a steady growth being registered in AMD-based PCs in India. In 2002, AMD expanded and established a stronger base in India. During this period AMD tied up with HCL Infosystems for distribution of processors, to increase its reseller base and to make an entry into the government sector.

Sanjeev Keskar

According to Sanjeev Keskar, AMD’s country manager for Far-East (India), this has proved to be a major breakthrough, since the government is one of the largest buyers of PCs in India. The Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (agency responsible for specifying buying criteria) allowed the machines fitted with AMD processors to compete with Intel for future government tenders. Earlier, AMD was not considered for government tenders, which specified just the Intel architecture for systems. This decision is expected to boost the company’s future growth in India. AMD has recently started some awareness and training initiatives with the Central and state governments.

However, this year the company has altered its market strategy wherein the market is divided into three key focus areas. The first: to aggressively tap OEM partners. The purpose is to aggressively tap this segment to push products in the government and corporate segment. AMD’s current OEM partners include Wipro, HP and HCL Infosystems. “We see tremendous growth opportunities in the government, education, SOHO and SME segments. In these sectors OEM brands are more recognised than component brands. To gain that brand recognition and marketshare in these sectors, we will work closely with our OEM partners,” says Keskar.

The second strategy is to have AMD’s direct marketing campaign specifically targeted at the end customer. The company has already started this campaign with its OEM partners.

As part of the third strategy, the company is busy developing a strong system integrator and reseller network. According to Keskar, assemblers enjoy an 80 percent marketshare in the consumer and home PC segment and they’ll be the brand ambassadors for AMD.

The company also plans to train sytem integrators to assemble AMD-based systems and ensure that they make more margins on them. In addition, AMD would also be providing technical and logistics support to them. For this, the company has divided its distribution network into three layers. At Tier-1, AMD has two major distributors—Avnet Max and Tech Pacific. At Tier-2, they have three master resellers—Priya, Zeta and Abacus. Third layer comprises the rest of the resellers spread across the country. Company sources say that there are roughly 500 resellers promoting AMD-based systems in India and they are constantly being monitored on a regular basis. For each layer, the company has lined up different programmes.

AMD is very bullish on its 64-bit launch slated during this year and is confident that the feature-rich 64-bit family of processors—with backward compatibility to 32-bit applications and comparatively low-cost—can change the way computing is done today. Some of the areas where this can be used are voice-recognition, 3D gaming and VLSI designing. Since chips based on 64-bit architecture have larger memory, they’ll prove ideal for workstations used for heavy graphics work. Considering that ‘increased realism’ is a necessity in gaming software, the company expects a major growth (due to the low cost advantage) in this sector too.

“At AMD we are confident that users having enterprise applications would be an immediate beneficiary of this breakthrough because of faster processing power. Besides, customers don’t have to redesign all their application software for the 64-bit platform,” said Keskar. “We are very confident of its growth and acceptance in the market and that stands true for the Indian market as well,” he commented. While the Opteron version of the 64-bit processor family is primarily for servers, a desktop version—Athlon 64—will be launched during the second half of this year.

— Punita Jasrotia