A Year Ago: Dixons baffled by Intel accusation

The UK's largest electrical retailer Dixons reacted angrily today to a verbal attack on its pricing by Intel's chief executive Craig Barrett.

Barrett and Paul Otellini, vice president of Intel's architecture business group, launched into the PC retailer at Comdex Fall accusing the group of charging "ridiculous margins" for PCs.

However, Dixons' turned the criticism round to shame Intel's eroding market position as a result of rival chip makers, such as Cyrix and AMD, eating into its profits. "We can make no sense of this comment. Intel is probably interpreting its loss of market share in our stores as a problem in the market as a whole," a Dixons Spokesperson said.

"In fact, what is really happening is that we are selling more PCs in our stores that have non Intel chips in them and their market share has fallen considerably," Dixons went on.

Earlier this month, Dixons started selling £599 Patriot PCs, based on the Cyrix MII-300 processor, in 800 stores and recently launched a free Internet Service Provider, Freeserve. The group, which owns Currys and PC World, insisted that its share of the indirect domestic PC market was only 15 percent.