Wednesday, December 13th 2017
"Intel inside" Campaign Funds Cut, Might Bring Higher Pricing to End Users
Intel has decided to rollback investment - read, funding - for its "Intel inside" marketing campaign, which has been with us since 1991. The "Intel inside" campaign is one where Intel has been offering OEMs and system integrators some amount of compensation and marketing funding for their Intel-based products, and is aimed at helping OEMs and channel partners drive PC sales growth. However, if CRN's report is right, Intel is looking towards cutting funding for this program by 40% to 60%.
OEMs have been including Intel's "Intel inside" funding as part of their annual marketing budgets, and the reduction of this funding from Intel can go one of two ways: manufacturers reduce marketing budget, or keep the same budget, but pass on the increased expenses towards consumers. For companies, the second option is likelier to be true, simply because marketing plays such a prominent role in company's visibility in the usually crowded markets.
"We're hearing that major cuts are coming throughout Intel's marketing and channel programs," a top executive for a major Intel partner who has been informed of the cuts told CRN. "The marketing funds have been moved to other groups within Intel that aren't channel-specific or PC-centric. The funds will now go towards driving the business in data center, giving more to the data side of the house instead of compute. A lot of dollars are moving to other areas or kept in house to improve Intel's profit and margins." Whether Intel needs this added funding to be added to its bottom line, however, is always a matter up to debate.
Intel spokespersons have confirmed this to CRN, saying that these changes are intended to "help customers more efficiently and effectively market with Intel, while helping us market with more precision in alignment with Intel's business priorities." That's all well and good, but the snarkiest among us might ask themselves whether or not this stems from the fact that some Intel products now have AMD inside as well.(Too soon?)
Source:
CRN
OEMs have been including Intel's "Intel inside" funding as part of their annual marketing budgets, and the reduction of this funding from Intel can go one of two ways: manufacturers reduce marketing budget, or keep the same budget, but pass on the increased expenses towards consumers. For companies, the second option is likelier to be true, simply because marketing plays such a prominent role in company's visibility in the usually crowded markets.
12 Comments on "Intel inside" Campaign Funds Cut, Might Bring Higher Pricing to End Users
So intel paid for general budgetary marketing as long as it met certain parameters? That doesn't seem modern day sustainable. "Resell our products and we'll pay for your marketing" How big is the channel that uses this? How much are they paying. I mean sure it likely made Intel tons of money over the years, but now the industry is in decline while still being huge. I'm not sure Intel's getting a huge ROI out of that.
seems like it would be cheaper to provide stock marketing materials that can be customized for brand to the partners instead.
One variable to consider is that 8th gen products saw significant performance improvements from increased core counts, so it’s possible OEMs could get by with more i3 and i5 products and recover cost savings there. It almost seems like Intel was not prepared to add cores this soon, especially since they desperately need a node shrink to keep reducing die sizes.
It does incentivize them to include intel in their product, though "bribe" is indeed a bit harsh.