The European Commission has aired some of Intel's dirty secrets, publishing e-mails that show how the chip maker squashed competition.
"PLEASE DO NOT... communicate to the regions, your team members or AMD that we are constrained to 5 percent AMD by pursuing the Intel agreement," said one July 2002 e-mail from an HP executive, allegedly illustrating how HP agreed to purchase 95 percent of its desktop chips from Intel.
A Dell presentation from 2003 warned of "severe and prolonged" retaliation from Intel for switching any part of Dell's supplies to Advanced Micro Devices.
"Late last week Lenovo cut a lucrative deal with Intel," said an internal e-mail from a Lenovo executive in December 2006. "As a result of this, we will not be introducing AMD-based products in 2007 for our Notebook products."
"You can NOT use the commercial AMD line in the channel in any country, it must be done direct," said another HP executive e-mail from 2004, allegedly showing that Intel paid HP to only sell AMD-powered computers through certain vendors. “If you do and we get caught (and we will) the Intel moneys (each month) is gone (they would terminate the deal). The risk is too high.”
In May, the European Commission found Intel guilty of giving rebates to computer makers who did almost all of their business with Intel. Additionally, the commission said manufacturers were paid to delay the launch of products with AMD chips. At the time of the ruling, the commission said it had "smoking gun" evidence of antitrust practices, and fined Intel $1.45 billion.
Intel formally appealed the decision last week, possibly forcing the commission's hand. In response to the e-mails, Intel spokesman Robert Manetta dismissed the e-mails as speculation from "lower level employees that did not participate in the negotiation of the relevant agreements, if they favored the commission's case." The commission also ignored documents, written testaments and statements given under oath by senior executives, Manetta said.
Regardless, the e-mails don't look good. They paint Intel as a company that strikes fear in the hearts of manufacturers, preventing them from taking their business elsewhere. If the statements in those e-mails are accurate, that's bad for consumers.
