AMD misses Q2 targets

AMD TODAY CONFESSED to missing its sales target for its financial 2006 second quarter. It said it sold some $1.22 billion worth of kit achieving a profit of $89 million, or $0.18 per share, for the quarter that ended on July 2nd.

AMD's chief bean counter, Robert (J) Rivet, said he was "dissatisfied" with the numbers. And if the bean counters ain't happy an axe usually falls on some slim neck somewhere along the line.

One happy note was that Opteron sales were up by 26 per cent over the previous quarter and the firm reckons its market share in that segment has gone up.

"While we achieved 53 percent year-over-year sales growth and recorded our twelfth consecutive quarter of greater than 20 percent year-over-year microprocessor sales growth, we are dissatisfied by not reaching our second quarter sales target," Rivet chirruped.

Yet he said manufacturing execution was "outstanding." Fab 36 is ramping 300mm capacity aggressively at mature yields he claimed, noting that fab for hire, Chartered Semiconductor is now also banging out AMD chips.

The company said sales were down from the prior quarter primarily due to the "challenging pricing environment for high-volume desktop processors". Total microprocessor unit shipments were down four per cent on the previous quarter. the company confessed.

Intel too blamed the "highly competitive pricing environment" for its profit slide posted earlier this week.

We can only hope that the duopoly now gives up banging out chips like there's no tomorrow and starts doing something more useful, like growing rice. ?

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