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I think you mean DUAL CORE, not DUO CORE. The DUO name is intel's brand.

1 ) Will AMD be able to continue its market-share dominance in the desktop category?
=> Dominanace? Really? A lead maybe, i doubt they ever dominated. But the lead will shrink fast, hard and fast if AMD doesn't come out with a response to the core 2 duo soon. Intel's pricing and performance is getting ahead of AMD already.

2 ) How will Intel capitalize upon the success of Core 2?
=> Who knows. As long as they don't repeat the strategies of the Pentium 4 dark ages, things should go fine for them.

3 ) Will AMD be able to match the success of Intel's Core 2 processors?
=> It doesn't seem likely at this time.

4 ) When will the market see true quad-core and even eight-core processors?
=> Mid 2007 when AMD releases its quad-core processor? Is this a trick question, processor roadmaps are pretty much public domain.

5 ) What surprises do the chipmakers have up their sleeves?
=> My magic 8 ball says, supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.

The Intel Core 2 Duo is merely two CPUs on a single chip. Duo is neither the first 64bit processor, nor does it share resources between cores, nor does it have an onboard RAM controller. for all the above look to AMD's CPUs.

As a matter of fact, AMD's response to Intel Core 2 Duo is AMD_K8L.

I'm not sure why did you say AMD is unlikely to response, w4t3v4.

Make no mistake, i'm an AMD fanboy.

The Core 2 Duo is NOT two single cores on a chip, i think you have mistaken that for the pentium D. The Core 2 Quad however is 2 Dual Core Cpus on a chip (not true quad core).

The AMD K8L is a response but if you read the early reports, it's performance is still not quite there yet and AMD is quickly losing its long held price/performance advantage (if it has not already been lost).

from the desktop cpu per se, the k8 vs core2 price performance advantage can be easily adjusted via a slight price reduction.

however, with vista on the horizon, what counts is the platform it is being bundled with.

Intel's Achilles' Heel seems to be its integrated graphics which is weaker in performance than AMD's ATI/nForce DX9 onboard solution. AMD would easily scores more brownie Vista Aero Glass Desktop points since the onboard Radeon/Geforce graphics would definitely be faster than the Intel's equivalent GMA 950/X3000 integrated graphics.

I stand corrected. Precisely because Core 2 Duo does not share resources between the cores, is why I say its basically merely two CPUs on a single chip. I'm not confusing it with Penitum D.

cre8tif, you talk about price reduction as if it doesn't affect anything else. But as it stands, any price reduction will hurt AMD many times more than it will hurt Intel.

The nforce boards have also been made available for Intel processors. I doubt the Vista effect will come into play that soon.