Intel Rally May Be Premature
26316
NEW YORK - Intel certainly surprised many semiconductor industry watchers today with its improving sales forecasts for the current quarter, but not everyone is convinced that all is as rosy as it seems at the world&#39;s biggest chipmaker.
548789
(InfoWorld) - The leading quote from this weekâs news comes from Intel CEO Paul Otellini: "We're doing product refreshes every two years, which is the model we invented and then stopped doing after Pentium 4, shame on us," Otellini said. "We fell off it -- mea culpa, we screwed up -- and now we're back on that pace." Otellini was speaking at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, but regardless of the venue, every time a CEO speaks, he or she is using analysts and journalists as a conduit to shareholders. When a CEO takes a podium to apologize to shareholders, it tends to be the board of directorsâ idea. This is an obtuse, though profuse apology. The screwup to which Otellini refers is his decision to clear Intelâs shelves of x86 property and dump it on AMD in one drop so that Intel could end the year with a bang, having had the last volley in the CPU wars. It did that. But one could liken Intelâs strategy in latter 2006 to a massive spread of fireworks thatâs sent up simultaneously. Everybody goes nuts at the spectacle of it, but after that brief rush, all thatâs left is silence and smoke, soon followed by the glow of taillights. As tacky as it is to quote oneself, I put Otelliniâs present bind succinctly in a column I wrote last August: âIntel shot its entire wad on Core microarchitecture. From here, the only place Intel can go is bigger cache, more cores, and faster clocks.â Indeed, that sums up Intelâs plans for 2007, and thereâs no swaggering spin, distraction, or buzzword bending that can make up for the enormous technology gap between Core 2 and AMDâs reengineered Barcelona quad-core Opteron. It isnât likely that Intel can play engineering catch-up, given that Otellini has pink-slipped 10,500 workers. Otellini will have more than empty cupboards and empty desks to apologize for. He set a strategy to bulk up Intelâs manufacturing capacity and to jam up AMD by forcing prices down and leaving AMD unable to meet spiked market demand. Market demand is sagging, and if it returns, AMD has the capacity advantage: It has third-party foundries standing ready to stamp out AMD CPUs if need be. Another example of poor judgment is Otelliniâs fixation on CPUs and chip sets. AMDâs acquisition of ATI put Intelâs rival in the high-margin peripherals business as well as a growing role in high-performance chip sets for Intel desktop and notebook PCs. Intelâs hostile attitude toward chip-set makers drove graphics and chip-set giant Nvidia to make surprisingly close ties with AMD despite its purchase of Nvidiaâs sole competitor. If only it ended there. Recently, Intel informed the Delaware Federal District Court that it cannot produce relevant e-mail messages that were exchanged after the filing date of AMDâs antitrust suit. Intelâs letter to the court blames individual human error while heaping detailed praise on executivesâ document retention plan. Buried in the text is the Nixonian counterpoint, âSome of the tapes appear to have been recycled.â Itâs not that Otellini hasnât done anything right. He did put the brakes on NetBurst. He won an exclusive with Apple and got Sun Microsystems to add Intel to its product line. But in the minus column, Otellini lost the companyâs gold medal exclusive PC maker, Dell, and people will wonder whose inboxes those recycled tapes might have contained. Intelâs CEO should be gilding his parachute. If he lasts out the year, it will be because Intelâs board wisely takes its time to choose a replacement. My litmus test? Find someone who believes that Intelâs yearly sponsorship of the A. M. Turing Award matters more than convincing a judge in Delaware that evidence really, truly got lost. And find a CEO who, when he or she apologizes for lousy decisions, uses the pronouns âIâ and âme.â
522815
Well, Intel did say - dismissively of course - that wasn&#39;t going to try to match AMD&#39;s little dual-core Opteron demo coup of last week and show off a dual-core Xeon at the Intel Developer Forum this week and - as good as its word - it didn&#39;t.
732905
Intel&#39;s revenue increase for the fourth quarter fell short of analysts&#39; estimates in part because of weak prices for memory chips.
569876
Paul S. Otellini, the probable new chief of Intel, may have to lead the chip manufacturer in an industry where the race may be for creativity, not speed.
80111
At ISSCC next week, Intel will reveal details on a new CPU that sounds like Silverthorne--but execs won't confirm.
22264
Intel missed its earnings projection, but its inventories dropped. Or did they? Bill Mann thinks not.
697960
Chip maker Intel (INTC ) caught Wall Street by surprise on Dec. 2 when it significantly raised fourth-quarter revenue estimates. But the news wasn&#39;t all rosy, as Intel failed to raise estimates dramatically for its closely watched gross-margin figure.
428555
Singapore/Taipei, September 6: The world&#39;s top contract chip makers are not yet feeling the slowdown in demand that led Intel Corp to cut its third-quarter forecasts, but analysts say the relief may be just temporary.
685504
The tiny Silverthorne chip is power-efficient, but it's still not quite enough for Intel to take on the smartphone industry.
352310
The next several weeks could dictate whether significant changes are required to get the company back on track and well positioned against Intel.
231067
Intel will always have AMD to worry about in the PC business. In the mobile world, however, it's shaping up a little differently.
753922
Taking stock. As 2004 winds down, Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) management isn&#39;t likely to grow nostalgic: The year saw a series of production glitches and delivery delays at the chip maker, and it
188117
One of these days AMD's going to take a bite out of Intel and not let go.
617106
Processor at 3.8GHz may mark the end of Intel's speed race.
104146
Investors not impressed Strong notebook and server chip sales carried Intel to a second quarter that neared the high end of previous forecasts. Investors, however, seemed unmoved by the results, as Intel noted strong pricing competition in the desktop market and a reliance on cost-cutting measures to gloss its results.â¦
447508
In a rare admission, an Intel executive says the Itanium chip family still isn't living up to