Toshiba teams up with AMD

Eastern electronics firm Toshiba has said that it is to scrap its policy of exclusively using Intel processors in its machines and plans to introduce a new AMD-based range in around 20 per cent of its models in North America and Europe later this year.

ZDnet reports that the world’s fourth largest PC manufacturer is following the lead of US-based Dell, which last year also decided to start building some of its machines with AMD products.

“With PCs becoming commodity products, there seems to be a new way of thinking that competition should be introduced even in procurement of such core parts like processors as long as there are no major differences in product specifications,” Macquarie Securities analyst Yoshihiro Shimada said.

“This could be a message that an era in which Intel took the lion’s share of microprocessor profits as the king of PC chips is over.”