Nehru Place witnesses Intel versus AMD battle

Rahul Gupta

The war is on. After Coke and Pepsi, it's
now time for two IT MNCs—Intel and AMD—to clash for
advertising space. The two company's employees virtually had a
fight on the issue recently in Nehru Place.

It is alleged that AMD Athlon posters
were forcibly removed and torn by a section of the Intel
workforce. And in a typical filmi style, a heated exchange of
words ensued between the warring parties in a crowded area of
Nehru Place.

The channel partners of AMD have claimed
that Intel is getting into uncompetitive practices and removing
AMD posters from retail outlets, while on the other hand Intel
officials had taken the excuse by saying that tearing off posters
is commonplace here, which has resulted in a mild controversy.

Rumors are also that Intel has threatened
that it would withdraw GID certification of resellers selling AMD
processors but the Intel officials have denied the fact of
threatening the resellers but virtually accepted that any
reseller selling Intel products is not supposed to sell products
of competing vendors.

The storm brewed when Intel had removed
the advertisement posters of AMD from the prominent Nehru Place
market. The issue had taken the worst shape when the heated
argument had taken place between the officials of both the
companies in a crowded block of the market. Although most of the
channel partners have confirmed that the incident happened but
there is a section of the retail community which has denied the
knowledge of the incident.

However, RC Bothra of GuruKripa Computers
said that Intel had removed the posters of AMD from the market,
which had resulted in the argument between the Intel and AMD
officials. On the other hand, Shyam Modi, President, Delhi
Computer Traders Association, denied the fact that any such
incident had happened in the market.

When contacted, Sandeep Aurora, Regional
Channel Manager, Intel, also ruled out any such incident having
happened and said, “I'm not aware of any clash between AMD
and Intel employees.”

Rahul Singh, Senior Marketing Specialist,
AMD, said, "We believe in healthy competition and hope that
the competitors will also go this way." On the other hand,
Intel officials refused to comment on the issue and said that
there is nothing new and these things usually happen in this
market.

Although none of the channel partners or
the company officials are openly coming out to speak on the
issue, but one thing is sure that nobody is happy with the
happening of the incident in Nehru Place. But if such things
happen to continue at this place, it would definitely affect both
the end user and reseller community in the most awful way.

(CNS)