Because costs are extremely low for AT89S52 for instance, here in Germany!! And please remember that Philips' chips also shows buggs from time to time...

Atmel was very successful with AT89C51, when they combined their proven flash memory technology with '51 core.

Nevertheless their support is lousy and offending: Some weaks ago I tried to come in contact to an technican of atmel in Germany. To my surprise they told me, that there are only TWO technicans in Germany. But the one was in hollidays and the other was ill. Then I tried to contact someone in Switzerland, but they only spoke French (a bit too fluently for me...), then I tried Austria without any success, tried atmel distribution in Scottland, but the guy never went into his office, then tried atmel head quarter in San Diego, having had very nice talks too people who even could speak german to my surprise, but I could never get in contact to David Lee who seems to be the chief for my problem. Whatever I spoke on his phone box he never replied anything to me, he never seemed to be in office, there seemed to be no other technican available in atmel headquarter, ... The only I got was a nice phone bill and lots of ANGER!

Is this a cause of globalization? In former times I could get in contact to MY technican at SIEMENS. But unfortunaley they never could offer me a proper microcontroller...

Kai