We view this slowdown as an opportunity to strengthen our relationship with the channel

Having moved his base back to India from the US, Ramkumar Subramanian is now
trying to propel AMD into the fast-growth league, especially when business is
sluggish for the chip maker and others in the industry:

Currently when demand is sluggish and business is slow, is AMD using this
time to do some introspection?

I believe the higher you climb, the more you fall. We view this slowdown as
an opportunity to strengthen our relationship with the channel. In a
recessionary environment, customers would take their time to make their
purchases and would prefer to defer the not to important ones. We offer better
value in terms of pricing and power consumption. So while the recession will
impact us, we will emphasize on our key strengths which is engaging with the
right target audience to closer interaction programs.

And how do you propose to do this?

To begin with we have refreshed our entire product line in the desktop space
following the success of our Shanghai chips in the server business. We have
modelled our desktop processors on the Shanghai to serve the channel everywhere
by adding better performance and value at economical prices.

Besides this, we are working with IBM to offer our master distributors longer
credit period so that they can pass this on to their customers in key
geographies and keep the business flowing. We are also educating our partners
through our Connect program to avoid over-stocking and instead opt for
just-in-time purchases. These are some of the ways and means by which we are
trying to bring stability in the market.

So what is the kind of investment that will go into India?

In India we will reinvest on core areas like the workstation graphics. There
are a lot of animation movies being made in India in recent times and this area
allows us to bring into play our intellectual property and capitalise on it for
this fast-growing market. We propose to work with our OEM alliances as well as
partners to get this ball rolling.

Ramkumar Subramanian VP-Sales and Marketing India and SAARC, AMD

For two years now AMD has not posted profits globally. Everyone is waiting
for the company to make a big-bang comeback. Are their expectations justified?

Yes, we have had a rough time these past couple of years. We have also been
bloodied and bruised in the market, but we are not down yet. Instead we will
continue doing what we do best-offer the best technology in the best value
proposition. We will not defer from this track and we will acquire the means to
do this even better.

During the recent SB Yatra that we undertook in India, we realized that even
partners are making this transition from box pushing to solution

providing. Over 141 partners that we interfaced with strengthened this belief
of ours. We will keep redesigning our product portfolio to suit our customer
needs and design products that will really take care of their power issues.

Vinita Bhatia

(vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in)