Merry Christmas everybody!

When is the market dominated by a single player?

This post is a direct result of recent rumours in several blogs that state that Intel’s Penryn chips might appear later in the market than originally projected because AMD currently has a very weak product line and is not a threat even for Intel’s current CPU models! Of course Intel has the last word in this, but even the rumour is enough to make me think that there are cases when users do not receive the freshest technology developments as they become available at company R&D departments. For this to happen, the particular company must be the absolute leader in its market, the undisputed number one. Here is some examples:

• Intel obviously. It dominates computer CPUs for ages now.
• Canon in photographic cameras.
• Microsoft in operating systems.
• Apple in portable music devices and music downloads.

So apart from market share how do you judge that a company is in such a strong position?