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Celeron "has bombed" claims IBM

But Dataquest says jury still out on its success

IBM said today that its sales of Celeron processors have been poor. But the jury is still out on how successful the chip has been. The original Celeron, released in April, is expected to be phased out some time next month. Bill Holtshauser, a marketing director from IBM US, said that the original Celeron chip "had bombed" but added that Intel's second iteration of the part, with a Mendocino core offered better opportunities. However, Joe D'Elia, senior microprocessor analyst at Dataquest UK, said that it was too early to make that judgement. He said: "The only quarter we have tracked Celeron so far was the second quarter, and in Europe they [Intel] shipped just under 99,000 PCs. It's not a huge number, but you have a very definite profile of uptake of a new chip and there's always a buildup." D'Elia said that when the highly successful Pentium MMX 166MHz part shipped, its first quarter of sales amounted to around 100,000. "But uptake has been a lot faster. With the Pentium II processor, it's only taken about four quarter to ramp, and so you'd expect a swifter slope." He said: "By historical standards the Celeron hasn't done too badly. The first Pentium II, the 233MHz chip, was shipped in only 23,000 systems in its first quarter but the uptake was much greater after that." He said the latest Celerons, with Mendocino cores, are much better parts than the original Celeron. "That will be where AMD is when they ship the K6-3 at the end of this year," he said. "The only thing that's missing from the latest Celerons are the 3D enhancements." An Intel representative said: "We saw a need for a PC in the basic segment and the Celeron was our first attempt. Our second attempt is vastly improved." ®

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