AMD's chief sales and marketing officer resigns

According to an article recently put out by The Wall Street Journal, Advanced Micro Devices' chief sales and marketing officer Henri Richard is stepping down. Reportedly, AMD's top sales exec "decided to leave AMD because of another job opportunity," although we aren't told where exactly he'll be heading. The firm is supposedly planning to "formally announce Mr. Richard's resignation" soon, but attempts to contact the chip maker for comment were apparently in vain.

[Via Hexus, thanks Arneh]

[Bob @ Aug 22nd 2007 5:05PM]

My money is on him going to a competitor. Possibly VIA, or even maybe Intel. Wouldn't surprise me either way.

[John Doe @ Aug 22nd 2007 5:59PM]

*sniffs* Does anyone else smell the foul oder of Palm? Its a little different but there does seem *sniffs* Yep its definitely there.
They need to get new people in there soon before it turns really sour.

[Adoniteking @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:03PM]

i bet he took a truck load of stuff and upgraded all his pcs with all the latest processors and ATI graphics cards including prototypes of stuff we havent heard of: compatible wireless cards a/b/g/n and W! O_OWTF?! the guy is future-proofed for next 20years

[Dan @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:15PM]

Try five months.

[AlexP @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:29PM]

Nah, 4 years sounds fair, although he won't be running at native resolution in 4.

[Dean Lowe @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:33PM]

Upgraded with Intel Core 2 and NVIDIA GeForce?

Why would he take hardware when he's got stock options?

[AlexP @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:18PM]

AMD has a marketing team?

What?

[JediFonger @ Aug 23rd 2007 8:31AM]

lol, i agree! i know intel has much more capital for marketing, but amd can DEFINITELY afford some ads. maybe not blue man's group, but why not canvas celebs to give them free CPU's and other gift baskets or incentive to be their spokesperson? i'll give you an example, robert rodriguez utilizes amd64 to render a ton of his troublemaker studio (aka his garage) for FEATURE films all the time like once upon a time in mexico, etc. i'm sure he'd do it for nice hardware upgrades to his gear. hopefully this guy leaving means an "upgrade" in marketing for amd. the better the marketing the more profit for amd, the more profit, the more $ for r&d, which translates to being able to compete better. i'm very skeptical of barcelona's claims against intel's current single socket quadcore solution.

[Jeebus @ Aug 23rd 2007 12:39PM]

Yeah, no shit. For 5 years AMD had not only the absolute performance crown, but also the price/performance crown, and AMD never did a damn thing to advertise that fact. This guy does not deserve another job. What a tool.

[kaps @ Aug 22nd 2007 7:16PM]

Maybe their stock will have a chance..

[Josh @ Aug 22nd 2007 7:42PM]

More signs of bad news for AMDs new processor... I hope all goes well for them, not only because i have only bought AMD for all of my computers and am a major fanboy, but if intel has no competition we all lose because of high prices.

[melvz @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:07AM]

quote: "but if intel has no competition we all lose because of high prices."

highly unlikely! in case AMD goes down the drain... it does not guarantee that Intel will jack up the prices! Intel has several production facilities that are producing high volume of chips which in turn will produce a high volume of supply. Like everything else in any market, it will still be affected by the law of supply and demand (economics 101)! if the demand slows down and with Intel producing volumes of chips (since they its not sound business decision to let their production facility go idle), Intel will have to reduce prices in order to reduce excess inventory!

its more of them being able to control or dictate the prices, but they cannot bring it to a level wherein prices are not affordable or they will end up with several warehouses stocked with excess inventory of chips.

so the claim of AMD fanboys stating that prices of chips will go up once competition is eliminated is absurd!

[L. Cyphre @ Aug 23rd 2007 3:35AM]

>melvz
Dream on, Intel fanboy.
When a company has total control of the market, and can demand whatever price for its products that it wishes - and it can because people NEED computers whatever the price - they MOST CERTAINLY WILL.
Monopolies are never good. I thought history taught us that already.

[melvz @ Aug 23rd 2007 3:59AM]

> L. Cyphre guess you're a self proclaimed fan boy... i didn't say I was rooting for all Intel products... I was stating about the basic dynamics of economy... may you go back to school and learn some basic principles of economics... Intel's current production level has reached the level wherein it can produce more chips than the current market is demanding.. this for them is excess inventory... too much inventory does not translate to profits... to reduce these inventories they need to reduce their prices too in order to adjust for the consumer demand...

like i said they are also affected by the law of supply and demand... just like everybody else... its the reality...

if you're complaining about monopoly... go tell AMD to quit screwing around...

[bunkka @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:04AM]

we can only hope this is good news

[melvz @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:09AM]

this is good news... AMD marketing wasn't performing well comparing to the performance of other marketing teams from within the IT sector!

[mrF1xIT @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:47AM]

Something like this was kinda expected...

[Brad @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:13PM]

AMD has a marketing team?

What?

Well put Alex. I personally have never even seen an AMD commercial, or bilboard. The only place I've seen them advertise is in some magazines.