Intel Corp says that its introduction of its 600MHz Pentium III on August 2 is not designed to spoil the arrival of Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s Athlon chip. Indeed, the company is denying that the Athlon represents competition to its jewel in the crown. It remains to be seen what competition the Pentium III really has, Seth Walker, an Intel spokesperson commented, citing AMD’s history of poor yields and production problems with its chips. Walker says that Intel is releasing the new version of the Pentium, as well as a 500MHz Celeron, because it has had better than expected yields and is targeting the lucrative back-to- school market.
Intel’s Celeron is now the market leader in the low-end CPU sector, according to new research from PC Data. Intel has aggressively priced National Semiconductor’s Cyrix unit and IDT Inc out of the market and is now outpacing AMD’s K6 line. And Intel expects that sales of the Pentium III will overtake the PII this quarter. The new Pentium III is priced at $669, while the Celeron comes in at $167, both in 1,000 unit quantities.
