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New AMD chief sees clear path to recovery
On Thursday, the day he was named chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Dirk Meyer wore jeans and cowboy boots to work. It’s his usual office attire, unless he’s traveling or at a formal meeting.
The casual attire fits Meyer’s approach to work - straighttforward, practical, analytical and definitely not fancy.
Meyer, 46, is an up-from-the-ranks chip design engineer who has been being groomed for the past two years to succeed Hector Ruiz as AMD’s chief executive.
The change happened sooner than planned. AMD announced the switch late Thursday, after it reported its seventh quarterly loss in a row.
Wall Street is not happy with the company, but Meyer sees a clear, logical path to recovery.
“There is a sense among people who don’t know the company well that we have to hit another home run” to pull AMD out of its slump, Meyer said Friday. “The fact is, a series of singles will work fine.”
AMD has talked about its product plans with potential customers, who say they like them.
“Our customers really want us to succeed,” he said. “I talk with customers all the time. They are very clear with us. They say: ‘What we need you guys to do is execute dependably.’ ”
Despite almost two years of losses, Meyer said AMD is on the verge of a rebound. It has just introduced promising products that should begin shipping in high volume in the second half of the year.
Executives have essentially guaranteed Wall Street that AMD will achieve an operating profit in the second half of the year.
And Meyer says the company is just months away from a major restructuring that will spin the manufacturing operations off into a separate company, wth new ownership.
Without the expensive manufacturing operations, AMD can concentrate on designing, marketing and selling chips that compete effectively against its two tough competitors - Intel Corp., the largest and richest company in the semiconductor industry, and Nvidia Corp., the foremost maker of graphics chips.
“Hector said he will be the most disappointed man on Earth if it is not done by the end of the year, and I will be the second most “ disappointed, Meyer said. “It certainly needs to happen to remove this cloud over our head relative to the financial viability of the company.”
Despite the big challenges AMD faces, Meyer sees plenty of opportunities. The company plays in two large and profitable markets - graphics and computer processors - and it only has one major competitor in each of those markets. That, h e believes is a far better situation than many chip markets where a half dozen or more companies fight it out.
Meyer says the new job is right for him. “If I wasn’t doing this, there is no other job in high tech that I would want to have. Anything else would be boring. This is not boring.”
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Dirk Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz as AMD CEO
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has replaced Hector Ruiz as chief executive, naming Dirk Meyer to succeed him. Ruiz will remain chairman.
The announcement came as AMD reported its seventh quarterly loss in a row, including a per-share loss that was bigger than Wall Street had expected. Its shares fell almost 10 percent on that news in extended trading.
Meyer, 46, had been AMD’s chief operating officer. In a press release this afternoon, the company’s board said his election was “the final phase of a two-year succession plan” developed by directors and top management.
Meyer joined AMD in 1995 and led the company’s microprocessor business from 2001 to 2006. He became chief operating officer two years ago and was elected to AMD’s board last year.
He takes over the tough job of leading the chip company’s David against Goliath Intel Corp. Intel controls most of the processor marketplace, and it has turned up the pressure on its smaller rival over the past year.
In addition to staying on as chairman, Ruiz, 62, will continue to lead AMD’s evolving “asset-light” strategy, which analysts expect will mean the spinning off of its manufacturing operations.
Ruiz said today he hopes to complete the program this year.
Ruiz joined AMD in 2000 as chief operating officer. He became CEO on April 25, 2002.
His tenure was marked by high highs and low lows, and often little in between. The company scored a clean victory over Intel in 2003 when it released the Opteron processor for servers. But Intel since has flexed its size and resources to squeeze AMD — a recurring theme in the competition between the companies.
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PC shipments stay strong; top vendors all make gains
Worldwide PC shipments in the second quarter increased 16 percent over the same period last year, to almost 71.9 million units, according to Gartner Inc., a technology research firm.
Dell recorded a second consecutive quarter of faster shipment growth than rival Hewlett-Packard, according to both research firms. But H-P also posted a strong quarter, and it retained a wide advantage as the world’s largest computer maker.
H-P finished the quarter with 18.1 percent of the worldwide PC market on shipment growth of 17.1 percent, Gartner said. Dell easily held the second spot with 15.6 percent market share on shipment growth of 21.9 percent.
Acer was third with a 9.4 percent market share, and Lenovo fourth with 7.8 percent.
In the U.S., Apple again posted a big quarter. Its second-quarter domestic shipments increased 38.1 percent, Gartner said, pushing it past Acer into the No. 3 spot in the U.S.
Dell held 31.9 percent of the U.S. market, Gartner said, followed by H-P with 25.3 percent, Apple with 8.5 percent and Acer with 8.1 percent.
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Downloads of IPhone 3G applications hit 10 million the first weekend
Downloads for the 3G Apple iPhone topped 10 million in the first weekend.
Users are doing multiple downloads, probably because there are 200 free applications on the iTunes site where there’s a list of the top mobile programs. There are also 600 applications that you have to pay for. In the top 10, they range from 99 cents to $9.99.
Steve Jobs says that 90 percent of the applications are less than $10.
There are some really useful mobile programs such as one free applications called Where. It allows users to search for locations such as pizza places and gas stations and then gives the address and directions to any one of them by touching the location on the screen.
There are also some silly applications, like PhoneSaber. It creates a picture of a Star Wars light saber on the screen and then makes its buzzing sound when the phone is waved back and forth. Another toy, this one for $2.99 cents, called iBeer, has a picture of a foamy mug of the suds on the screen. When you move it back and forth, the suds move, too.
The most popular free application is Remote, a program that allows users to control the tunes on their computers remotely over a Wi-Fi network. And among pay programs, Super Monkey Ball, at $9.99, is tops. It’s similar to the Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario Brothers games.
If you see anything that really wows you, let me know.
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Texas gunnin’ for video games
LOS ANGELES - Speaking at the E3 video game industry conference here today, Texas Gov. Rick Perry says he will seek new state incentives to try and recruit more gaming companies to the Lone Star State.
Perry wasn’t specific, but said would ask the state legislature to boost the current incentives, which give game developers up to $250,000 if they develop a game in the state, using state talent. In doing so, he hopes to compete even more with states like Georgia and Louisiana, which also have big incentives for game makers, and industry leaders California and Washington state.
“Texas is the third-biggest game-producing state in the country … and I’m gunning to be No. 1,” Perry told a sparse crowd at E3 this morning.
Perry is the only state governor to ever give a keynote at E3, and this year he was the biggest non-industry name on the agenda. In the past, the gaming conference has attracted rock and movie stars and a wide variety of state and local dignitaries, but show organizers have dramatically scaled back the event and limited attendance.
Though there were only about 40 people in attendance at his morning speech, Perry didn’t hesitate to play to the crowd.
In his somewhat rambling half-hour talk, he characterized the gaming industry as the answer for nothing less than the nation’s widespread economic problems and its poor physical fitness and said virtual worlds could someday even inspire a better real-world.
Following a short video showing Austin-area gaming companies, Perry - in true Texas spirit - even went as far as to say the industry’s competitive sprit was not unlike that of “Davy Crockett … and those guys at the Alamo.”
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Research firm: Five companies make GRADE for tech disposal
Technology disposal and recycling is growing into a huge business. But the industry is still quite fragmented, and the process different firms use to dispose of a company’s old equipment is far from consistent.
IDC hopes to inject a little more certainty into the process. The technology research firm set up a new certification process to grade the disposal programs offered by U.S. computer makers, scrap companies and recycling/disposal companies. It released the results today.
Five companies earned IDC’s G.R.A.D.E. (Green Recycling and Asset Disposal for the Enterprise) certification: Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM among computer makers; Redemtech and Intechra among firms that focus specifically on technology disposal and recycling.
To compile the study, IDC rated 34 processes at 25 of the country’s largest disposal and recycling firms. It certified the five companies that scored 75 percent or higher on those criteria.
The tech-disposal industry is still very fragmented, but the small, local scrap companies are seeing increased competition from large recycling companies and computer makers.
Meanwhile, pressure has ratcheted up on corporate technology managers, who have to ensure that their company’s data is secure and its equipment is properly disposed of.
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Intel unveils new chips
Intel Corp. unveiled a new lineup of laptop chips Monday night that it claims are faster, better and use less power than anything on the market.
The five new Centrino Core 2 Duo processors help put Intel further ahead of rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and also indicate the changing face of portable computing, according to Intel officials.
“When we first introduced Intel Centrino back in 2003, there were very few Wi-Fi hotspots, YouTube videos and social media didn’t really exist, “thin and light” only referred to weight goals and desktop PCs outsold notebooks by a very wide margin,” Mooly Eden,general manager of the company’s Mobile Platforms Group said in a statement. “Today, notebooks outsell desktops in the U.S, and we’re paving the way to HD entertainment, rich online gaming, faster broadband wireless speeds and an easier and more secure way for businesses to manage, update and repair their notebook fleets.”
The new chips will help speed up the computing power and let users do things like view high-definition videos on their laptops, all while using less battery power, according to Intel.
Nearly 250 new consumer and business notebook PCs are being designed with the new chips. Many will hit the market just in time for back-to-school shopping.
See more here.
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Dell to spruce up its corporate laptops
Dell is planning to add a bit more style and a few new technologies to its line of business notebooks.
A recent peek at the new Latitude laptops showed a black, textured exterior, an edgier shape and a logo offset to the side instead of the middle. (Please pardon the amateur photography from yours truly…)
The laptops almost certainly will carry the new Intel Centrino 2 chipset expected to be released tonight. Few other details on the new laptops were forthcoming.
Separately, Dell said today it will offer a download to facilitate multi-touch capability on its XT tablet computers, and said it would start selling 128-gigabyte solid-state drives in its high-end notebooks.
Because of their durability, solid-state drives are becoming an increasingly popular alternative to traditional hard drives with spinning disks. Dell will begin selling the 128-gigabyte version for $649 in its corporate notebooks. It will add them to its Alienware gaming systems next week, the company said.
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Apple sells 1 million 3G iPhones even with the first day hassles
Apple sold 1 million 3G iPhones in its first three days, the company says.
Not bad considering it took 74 days to reach that total in the iPhone’s initial rollout. Then again it wasn’t sold in 21 countries the first time around either.
That puts 7 million iPhones in circulation, and moves Apple closer to its goal of 10 million by the end of the year.
In addition, Techcrunch.com says there were also 10 million applications downloaded. Of the 800 applications available, 200 are free.
The big weekend occurred despite a major hassle on Friday at Apple and AT&T outlets. There was a global problem with Apple’s iTunes servers that prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store.
Instead, employees told buyers to go home and perform the last step by connecting their phones to their own computers.
It was a tough pill to swallow after they stood in line before daybreak to be among the first customers in the store.
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Not everybody loves the iPhone
There’s always a naysayer, even with the much-hyped 3G iPhone.
Mitch Wagner, in a blog on InformationWeek.com, said the new cell phone wasn’t a breakthrough device. He, as other reviewers have pointed out, complained that you’ll surf the Internet faster only if you live in one of the 280 U.S. cities where AT&T has upgrades to the faster network speeds.
He said the use of 3G will drain battery life quicker, and it was already “marginal” in the original handset.
It may also have built-in GPS coverage. But it can’t copy the turn-by-turn navigation of one of the more expensive GPS units used in vehicles. If a building blocks the signal, it can only locate the general area you’re in and not the precise location.
Wagner’s blog pulled together his own observations along with those of other reviewers so you get a pretty encompassing collection of the iPhone’s foibles.
He suggested looking at what new applications are available on the Apple Web site before buying. Still, for heavy users, the GPS and 3G capabilities are nice to have.
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... read the full comment by enfield | Comment on Apple sells 1 million 3G iPhones even with the first day hassles Read Apple sells 1 million 3G iPhones even with the first day hassles
It will be a tall order to make the necessary changes but, if there is an insider at AMD who can get the company moving in the right direction, it’s Dirk Meyer.
... read the full comment by Ed | Comment on Dirk Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz as AMD CEO Read Dirk Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz as AMD CEO
Let’s see, the transition started two years ago, and there have been 7 straight losing quarters. What a coincidence.
... read the full comment by Walkerman | Comment on Dirk Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz as AMD CEO Read Dirk Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz as AMD CEO
Aditya, Dell offers many options for its business customers through a department called CFI (Custom Factory Integration). They can get custom asset tags with logo and contact information for their business applied to the system straight from the factory.
... read the full comment by Joe | Comment on Dell to spruce up its corporate laptops Read Dell to spruce up its corporate laptops