Case Study Analysis on AMD and their Customer Centric Approach to Innovation

Case Study Analysis on AMD and their Customer Centric Approach to Innovation

Introduction

This document is a strategic analysis of the case study on AMD and its innovative approach to business which is intrinsically dependent on a Customer-centric approach. Intel and AMD are two of the biggest fishes in the microprocessor manufacturing ecosystems. These two are in direct competition, however Intel has enjoyed majority of the market share and thus its size is much bigger than AMD (Edwards, 2006). This fact corresponds to an even bigger budget allocation by Intel towards marketing, sales, distribution and other such functions. This helps Intel maintain its market position. These competitive factors, forces AMD to constantly sought, develop, and implement innovation based strategies, that try to gain leverage from Intel in the markets.

Due to the existent pressures of Intel's highly competitive position, AMD has found itself in need of strategic overhaul several times in the last decade. However, the company has at most instances been able to overcome these challenges. Through these means, AMD has remained a competitive threat to Intel, and has been able to strengthen their position on a periodic basis.

The following paper would discuss the efforts that are required by the microprocessor manufacturer to stay competitive and be able to increase its market share in the microprocessor market for notebooks and corporate desktops. To answer the above, the paper would also try to discuss the use 'Opteron', being the flagship product of AMD, as a tool to successfully leverage other products. The following section would make a retrospective discussion on the impact of the 'Power' campaign initiated by the company.

The paper would also evaluate Intel as the biggest competitor of AMD. Thus its new product plans and their effect on AMD would be considered. Finally, the paper would focus in on the customer-centric approach being applied at AMD. The arguments, would seek to delineate the strategy as the best chosen 'innovation' process by the company? Or not?

What would it take for AMD to see a significant increase in its market share in processors used in corporate desktops and notebooks?

Intel enjoys significant leadership in microprocessor markets that cater to consumer segments that purchase notebooks and corporate desktops. This significance is amply demonstrated if we focus on the market share that each of the two concerned companies, Intel and AMD, cater too. AMD has a meager market share of 13.7% in the server microprocessor business portfolio. Nonetheless they are second in the product segment. Conversely, Intel enjoys an astounding market share of 86.1%. However, for desktop microprocessors AMD is only 6.5% to Intel's 93.5%; and for pc processor segment AMD stands at 27.5% against Intel's 72.2% (Michelle Maisto citing IDC, 2010).

Ofek & Barley (2007) suggests that AMD's ability to make market inroads is compromised because of the factor that Intel is dominant in most of the market segments that the company caters too. Notebooks, corporate desktops are examples of the two of ...