Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do (2010)

Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by kvb on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @01:16PM (#5820741)

This is known in the economics literature as product crimping. Perhaps surprisingly, this can make everyone better off (not only Intel but also the purchasers of both the crimped and uncrimped goods). See "Damaged Goods", by Deneckere and McAfee [1].

[1] http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://www...

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Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by tomjen3 on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @03:16PM (#5821519)

The only thing I can see proof of here is that Intel is a monopoly, as they wouldn't be able to get away with this if they were actually competing against each other.

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Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by kvb on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @03:27PM (#5821589)

Did you read the paper? They cited a case where crimping occurred in printers even though IBM and HP were competing. Also, ARM and AMD are producing chips, even if they don't target the same subset of the market.

Regardless, the point is that by crimping Intel may be making themselves and their customers better off. Sure, we could posit that with an even more competitive chip market we'd be even better off, but that doesn't negate the fact that we might be worse off than the status quo if crimping were disallowed given the current competitive landscape.

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