New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo caused quite a stir this week with his antitrust suit against Intel, accusing the chip giant of conducting “an illegal campaign to deprive AMD of distribution channels.”

More than a few writers and bloggers chalked it up to politics. Cuomo’s ambitions are no secret: he wishes to be governor of the state just like his father Mario once was. With current governor David Patterson performing abysmally in opinion polls and up for reelection next year, this could be the time for the son of one of New York‘s most famous governors to strike.

Scott Testa, professor of Business Administration at Cabrini College in Philadelphia, adds “My gut is Intel is a very aggressive company and [Cuomo] felt there was an opportunity there, and felt that New York consumers were being wronged, and thought he’d make his move. Intel is very dominant in their market.”

Right now, the testimony is from executives and e-mails dating back as far as 2002. A trial could mean a parade of past and present PC OEM CEOs like Michael Dell, Mark Hurd, Carly Fiorina and Sam Palmisano testifying under oath, which could be either devastating or exculpatory to Intel.

Testa doesn’t believe it was on that level. “I truly believe that this was a mid-level, low-level management issue where you had an aggressive sales person or sales managers. That’s my gut. These rebates are public knowledge. This is between two public companies,” he said.

The latter part of Cuomo’s claim that “Intel launched an illegal campaign to deprive AMD of distribution channels and consumers of product choice and lower prices” could be a tough sell, since no one would argue that CPU prices haven’t come down over the course of the decade even as they advanced and became more powerful.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3847451/Digging+Into+NYs+Antitrust+Suit+Against+Intel.htm

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