Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is consolidating its presence in sub-Saharan Africa, and has shown quarter-on-quarter growth of about 30% in the region, says South African country manager Imi Mosaheb.
"We are managing to make headway in the channel, and our marketing has served us well. We are looking forward to good growth in SA throughout this year," he says. AMD has had a local presence since the middle of last year. SA is the base for the company's African operations.
He says the company is also expecting to increase its presence in other parts of Africa, beginning in East Africa in the middle of this year. "We are starting a discovery phase to find the right partners in Africa, which will be the basis for how we take AMD forward on the continent," says Mosaheb.
According to research firm BMI-TechKnowledge's (BMI-T's) 2006 Q4 Quarterly Tracker Report, AMD grew twice as fast as the local market, recording 61.3% year-on-year unit growth. The rest of the South African market showed 28.45% growth that year. "AMD attributes this growth to the simple, basic fact that an educated customer always makes the smarter choice," says Mosaheb.
AMD's local presence gives customers the confidence to use AMD products backed by the local support, he adds.
The company says the African expansion forms part of its 50x15 initiative. AMD has opened one of its first 50x15 learning laboratories in Gugulethu, near Cape Town.
The programme is aimed at enabling and providing affordable Internet connectivity to 50% of the global population by 2015. According to Mosaheb, less than 20% of the world's population have access to the various opportunities the Internet provides.
Release of the Spider
Towards the end of last year, AMD unveiled the first ATI-based platform on the international market, dubbed "Spider". Mosaheb says all the components are available locally, although the company will hold an official product launch in SA early this year.
The release includes new graphics cards that use ATI technology as well as a full system, which combines AMD Phenom quad-core processors, ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics processors with Microsoft DirectX 10.1 support, AMD 7-Series chipsets with CrossFireX and AMD OverDrive software.
"Spider allows the end-user to completely customise the platform through the ability to configure the processor, chipset and graphics by using the overdrive software. It also allows users to differentiate their systems based on the types of modifications that they choose to apply," says Mosaheb.
The new platform has received good reviews worldwide and many technology analysts are pleased with the possibility of a new competitive market. However, the majority of comment online seems in two minds as to whether the Spider platform can compete with either Intel's dual core processors or with Nvidia's current domination over the international graphics market.
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