AMD executives admitted their CPU strategy was inferior

Intel filed a written response to the FTC's lawsuit, the document was not widely noticed as it was filed on December 31, 2009, but WSJ took the time to read it and reports Intel is trying to argue that AMD's problems were largely due to AMD's own failings.

The chip giant dug through AMD's internal communication and found some rather interesting documents, such as the following snippets from 2004 in which Henri Richard, AMD's former top sales executive, argues that AMD's strategy is inferior and that he would never buy AMD for a personal system if he wasn't working there.

History shows AMD followed his advice, Richards suggested AMD should sell a platform of products like Intel does and that's exactly what they did. AMD got its hands on chipsets and GPUs through the acquisition of ATI, and is now focusing a bit more on a platform strategy.

Intel cites, among other things, internal statements in 2004 by Henri Richard–then AMD’s top sales exec and now a senior executive with Freescale Semiconductor–that a person looking at the situation “with an objective set of eyes” would never buy AMD chips. “I certainly would never buy AMD for a personal system if I wasn’t working here.”

Some of Richard’s other comments are redacted, but he goes on in the document to rail against AMD selling only microprocessor chips themselves, and not a “platform” of those products and accessory chip sets, as Intel does. He described that AMD strategy as “pathetic,” for “exposing a partial story, particularly in the commercial segment, that is clearly inferior to Intel’s, if we want to be honest with ourselves.”

He added that AMD is saddled with a reputation that “we’re cheap, less reliable, lower quality consumer type product.”