When I say they are not competitive, by no means I say that the performance of AMD products isn't comparable to the performance of their competitors.
Yes, AMD do have and has had competitive products for many years, so we've established that is not an issue.
But when you look from a holistic perspective, meaning pricing, cost, performance, support structure, features, whatever you can throw here, it is obvious they are behind the competition. The lack of value perceived by the consumers is translated in low prices and shrinking sales we have been seeing. The lack of sales *is* a serious indicative of lack of competitiveness.
From the holistic perspective examples you listed:
Pricing- AMD has been leading in pricing almost their entire existence. Scratch that, their
entire existence.
Cost- Hard to comment without knowing the cost of all 3 competitors. What's clear is that AMD can operate at much lower margins than the other 2.
Performance- We've already established that AMD is not only competitive, but
leading in many categories.
Support structure- What are you referring to here?
Features- AMD has FMA3, FMA4, BMI in their latest CPU's, 1 year ahead of the competition. For GPU's, they've consistently lead NVidia in features for many years. intel isn't even on the same planet let alone ballpark, in regards to GPU features, performance, efficiency, drivers, dev relations and a plethora of other factors. What could you be referring to here when you say they are behind the competition on features?
Whatever you can throw in there- I'm thinking about a
salesperson's bias and commission, ie retail edge. Online viral marketing. etc
As for lower pricing, if lower prices on competitive, performance and efficiency leading products doesn't translate to higher sales then there have to be other dynamics in play. We've seen one such example during the P4 and antitrust days. Perhaps this is still ongoing behind the scenes.
TL;DR- Lower sales *is not* necessarily indicative of competiveness.
Take for example, GPUs. AMD strategy of delivering more efficiency than Nvidia for the last two generations made their share jump in the GPU market, it was only when they changed this proposition and went for a GPGPU monster that they share shrank.
Considering GPGPU and heterogeneous computing is the future of computing, I wouldn't consider this a liability in any way. It does however show that AMD is once again ahead of the curve in features, and the market is headed in this direction with the overwhelming support of HSA.
AMD's GPU market share fell when intel began supporting nv enthusiastically in their products. This is indicative of a monopoly controlling the market.
Those other forces you deem guilty for AMD woes of lately are some of them creation by AMD itself. The financial markets didn't force AMD to launch Bulldozer, but the financial market is punishing AMD for not generating enough revenues. Also the reason on why nobody wants to put money in AMD, except for Mubadala, is because nobody really sees value in AMD product portfolio, a portfolio determined and researched by AMD and AMD only.
The financial markets are puppets of the U.S. administration thanks to bailouts on the taxpayers backs. The big MM's and financial institutions manipulate the markets constantly. Anyone watching could see that plainly. And lest we forget that Otellini is on Obama's technical advisory squad. From there, it's just a matter of connecting the dots.