Intel king of semiconductors despite slump in 2006
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(InfoWorld) - Despite a revenue plunge of 9.5 percent, Intel Corp. will retain its title as king of the hill for the worldwide semiconductor industry, posting annual revenue of $31.3 billion for 2006, according to Gartner. Intel's top competitors will post much better numbers, all recording double-digit revenue growth as they enjoy strong sales in dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory chips, wireless semiconductors and NAND flash, according to preliminary results for 2006 that Gartner released Thursday. Overall, the market is set to grow 11.3 percent to $261.4 billion. Intel's sinking results in this rising tide will cause its market share to sag from 14.7 percent in 2005 to 12 percent. The company was only able to record its 15th straight year as a market leader because it had banked such a large lead on smaller rivals like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (with 7.9 percent market share) and Texas Instruments Inc. (4.5 percent). Intel's problem was that its competitor Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) sold superior processors through the third quarter, judging by the chips' balance of price and performance in the server and consumer enthusiast segments, Gartner said. Intel lost even more revenue as the two companies launched a price war, which hurt Intel more than AMD as the larger company. Meanwhile, Samsung strengthened its position as the industry's second-biggest vendor by selling more DRAM, static RAM (SRAM) and NAND flash chips than any other company. Samsung will grow 12.4 percent to reach revenues of $20.6 billion, followed by Texas Instruments growing 17.4 percent to $11.9 billion and Infineon Technologies AG growing 29 percent to reach $10.6 billion, Gartner said. The bottom half of the top 10 were all predicted to record revenue of single-digit billions, including STMicroelectronics NV, Toshiba Corp., Renesas Technology Corp., Hynix Semiconductor Inc., AMD and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. The semiconductor industry will grow more slowly in 2007, likely rising by a high single-digit percentage compared to its 11.3 percent rise in 2006, Gartner said. The high points of the coming year will include continuing strength in the DRAM market and strong consumer electronics sales.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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Doubled-up processors were the big news at this year?s Intel Developer Forum. They boost performance without frying your chips ? and are coming your way soon.
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Intel&#39;s revenue increase for the fourth quarter fell short of analysts&#39; estimates in part because of weak prices for memory chips.The company recorded revenue of $10.7 billion, up 10.5 percent year over year, missing the $10.8 billion estimated by analysts polled by Thomson Financial.Though revenue from computing-related products was as expected, NAND memory revenue was lower than expected, Intel said in a news release.The company reported net income of $2.27 billion, below analysts&#39; estimates of $2.38 billion. Earnings per share were $0.38.Intel in November rolled out its next-generation Penryn processors,&#160;which the company claims provide better power efficiency and graphics performance than its earlier chips. Manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, the company first launched Penryn chips for workstations and in early January rolled out 45-nm chips for servers, laptops, and desktops.Intel is expected to launch processors for its Montevina platform, an upgrade to its mobile Centrino platform, later this year. It will also roll out Menlow, a platform for ultramobile computers, later this year. Intel is also working on a new chip architecture code-named Nehalem, which will appear in late 2008.
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The last major chip design that Mooly Eden convinced IntelÂ to adopt was a failure. As he prepared the design in the late 1990s that would become the Pentium M, he knew he couldn't afford to miss a second opportunity.
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Aiming to deflate archrival Intel, Advanced Micro Devices this week will show off its dual-core chips, which will start to trickle out toward the middle of next year.
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Intel has shipped more than 1 million quad-core Xeon 5300 microprocessors since introducing them in November 2006.
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Four years after its splashy launch, chip maker is still struggling.
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It will be a busy week for leading semiconductor chip manufacturer Intel. According to Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer and head of Intel Labs, the company will present 14 papers at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.
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Intel missed its earnings projection, but its inventories dropped. Or did they? Bill Mann thinks not.
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(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
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In a rare admission, an Intel executive says the Itanium chip family still isn't living up to
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Speaking at the Intel Developer Forum Wednesday, Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini announced the development of 15 products built on its 45nm silicon manufacturing technology and showcased the experimental 300mm chip.
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There's been yet another product delay at Intel.
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The glass-encased room inside Intel Corp.&#039;s microchip factory here, with its shiny, metallic surfaces and frigid air, is a world away from the blistering sun and brown earth outside. An army of robots suspended from the vast ceiling glide from one refrigerator-sized machine to the next. Their cargo: thousands of 12-inch silicon platters that form the raw material for Intel&#039;s most sophisticated computer microprocessor to date.
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Intel will miss its 2004 product cost-reduction targets because of a widely publicized string of product delays and problems, but those missteps are largely behind it now, the world&#39;s largest chipmaker said on Tuesday.
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kevcol writes &quot;The San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent interview with Intel&#39;s CEO Craig Barrett who retires next year.
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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.