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Report suggests Intel is preparing for a price war with AMD

AMD has had Intel on the back foot now across both the consumer and server market, but the chip giant could be ready to throw money at maintaining market dominance.
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer

Intel is no doubt feeling the heat in both the consumer and server markets, as AMD manages to outmaneuver the chip behemoth at every turn. But Intel could have an ace up its sleeve, in the form of billions of dollars in cash that it can use to fund a price war.

According to DigiTimes, Intel has a multi-phase plan in mind to help bolster market dominance. While most of the plan remains unknown, the first phase is reported to revolve around price cuts for OEM partners, which would trickle down the chain and -- hopefully -- result in cheaper laptops and desktops.

Intel has vast, yet declining amounts of cash on hand -- just over $12 billion as of September 2019 -- so potentially has a massive war chest. AMD, on the other hand, is not so comfortable, with only $1.2 billion cash on hand during the same period.

Intel is also no stranger to price cuts lately. The Core X line has seen significant price cuts, with the latest generation being about half the price of the previous-generation silicon.

While Intel still commands a dominant market share -- over 80% for desktop and laptop PCs, and more than 90% of the server market -- AMD is growing fast, especially in the laptop and server markets. Some reports suggest that AMD is on track to hit 10% market share in the server market by the end of 2020.

Small, but if Intel is considering a price war, it's clear that the company is worried about hemorrhaging any more market share.

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