The AMD company, chip market leader Intel’s lifetime rival, announced this week it would open an office in Romania to coordinate the future company activities in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

The official announcement in this regard will be made Tuesday, September 19,m when Advanced Micro Devices-AMD organizes a press conference to communicate its strategy for the coming year and the partnership programs to be applied in Romania.

The appearance of the Sunnyvale, California-based company is seen by many on the market as rather late than surprising. Still, the final consumers will only have to benefit from the move.

AMD’ss representative for Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria will be Ramona Prodea.

The head of the IT&C Commission in the Romanian House of Deputies, Varujan Pambuccian, sees the AMD entrance on the Romanian market as an “ordinary, late event” that would not affect the market too much.

“It would have been normal they opened an office here long ago. Still, Intel entered the Romanian market rather difficulty as well, despite sales would have justified an earlier presence. All said, I don’t think the event will bring too much change on the Romanian market. Multinationals don’t apply prices according to countries” they work in, Pambuccian told HotNews.ro.

He said he believed the main reason for this late appearance is that big companies receive information slowly and the information gets there in a distorted shape.

However, the head of the Association of Producers and Distributors of IT&C Equipment (APDETIC), Valentin negoita, believes the intense competition between AMD and Intel is mirrored in price policies eventually.

And he showed the competition got more severe this year as AMD, which practices lower prices traditionally, concluded a world-level deal with Dell in early 2006, while Intel dominates over 70% of the market and has entered a process of restructuring and innovation boost.

Negoita said such competition will be felt by consumers one day or another. And he said the presence of AMD on the Romanian market would improve the quality of products in the benefit of final consumers.

For his part, Intel representative to Romania Irinel Burloiu says the opening of an AMD branch in Romania was a sign the market reports significant growth and the clients would be the first to take advantage of it.

And he said Intel already has partnerships with over 1000 local integrators who assemble company products in Romania.