There has been speculation that at some point Intel may be accused of violating Anti-Trust laws. They do control 80+% of the desktop marketplace. So, AMD finally said “This is got to stop,” and here we are.

From News.com,

“The suit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, details alleged scare tactics and coercion that AMD claims Intel imposed on 38 companies, including large-scale computer makers, small system builders, wholesale distributors and retailers.

Intel processors account for more than 80 percent of the computers running x86-based chips, according to IDC. Those chips run many families of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Linux. Even Apple Computer has announced that it will switch exclusively to x86 processors for running Mac OS software, beginning in 2006. “

Although there has been other anti-competitive fights between AMD and Intel in the past, this suit is based on information found during a recent investigation by the Japanese Fair-Trade Comission. Japanese officials say Intel ’stifled competition by offering rebates to five Japanese PC makers which agreed to NOT buy, or to limit their purchases, of chips from Transmeta and AMD.’

I know that there are incentives from Intel for utilizing their processors over others. In fact, you must have a different product “line” for AMD and Intel desktops in order to properly qualify for incentives.

Incentives. Way to keep the market. Intel Inside provides MILLIONS of dollars to Dell annually for ad campaigns.

AMD has no such program in place at the current time.

What do you think? Should limits be placed on Intel to ensure they cannot dominate the market overwhelmingly now and in the future? Will the “WinTel” machine be bastardized across other platforms and processors? Tell me!