Intel, AMD jostled for market share in 2006
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Win some, lose some AMD lost market share to arch-rival Intel in 2006, but the smaller chip-maker nonetheless managed to make small gains in the desktop and laptop segments, the latest figures from market watcher Mercury Research reveal.â¦
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Strong holiday sales of computer and cell phone chips boosted Intel Corp.'s fourth-quarter sales to a record &#36;9.6 billion, but the world's largest chip maker saw profits slip 2 percent from the same period last year.
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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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For 35 years, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD ) stood in the shadow of archrival Intel Corp. (INTC ) AMD churned out lower-priced clones of the tech leader&#39;s chips and occasionally enjoyed a hit that helped boost its meager profits.
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Kerching Microprocessor chip sales hit record levels in the third quarter thanks in large part to an intense two-horse race between arch rivals Intel and AMD, according to a new study.â¦
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A strong demand for its computer chips brightens otherwise dismal year for the maker of semiconductors. By Laurie J. Flynn. SAN FRANCISCO -- Eking out a strong finish to end a disappointing year, Intel Corp
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Intel Corp. , the largest  maker of computer processors, posted a rise in second-quarter  earnings on Tuesday, but its missed its gross margin goal and  its shares fell nearly 5 percent.
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Worldwide&#160;lawsuits against Intel&#160;and&#160;four straight quarterly losses&#160;have distracted AMD during its integration of ATI Technologies, but the merger remains on track, according to industry analysts.
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BusinessWeek Online - For 35 years, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.  stood in the shadow of archrival Intel Corp.  AMD churned out lower-priced clones of the tech leader's chips and occasionally enjoyed a hit that helped boost its meager profits. But bad times easily outweighed the good. Again and again, Intel used its manufacturing muscle and pricing power to stymie AMD's ambitions, preventing it from gaining a foothold in lucrative markets such as servers and corporate PCs.
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AMD and Intel processor road maps for 2007 show both companies are on the move to address these issues.
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In 2007, AMD was plagued by rising debt, shrinking market share and mounting financial losses. What's in store for 2008?
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Intel enjoyed improved sales, while AMD did its best to limit the damage during a year plagued by a key product delay.
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Earnings reports from IBM, Intel, and AMD and acquisition news from Oracle and Sun did nothing to calm IT investor fears about an uncertain U.S. economy this week.The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index has gotten off to its slowest start in years. Even though the Nasdaq finished 2007 up by 9.8 percent for the year, it has been sliding steadily in the past few weeks.More analysts are starting to forecast a recession. U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, testifying Thursday before the House Budget Committee, warned that the risks of an economic downturn are growing. Though he said an economic stimulus package, including low interest rates, could help avoid recession, IT investors are clearly worried. After President George Bush endorsed some of Bernanke&#39;s comments about stimulus, a Friday morning market rally fizzled out by the end of the day.IBM, which issued a preliminary earnings report Monday and its full results Thursday, had good news for its investors.&#160;IBM said that it would post $28.9 billion in revenue for the 2007 quarter, a 10 percent jump from the same period one year earlier. Fourth-quarter earnings are $2.80 per share, up 24 percent and above analyst expectations. But the company said results were helped mainly by strong sales in Asia, Europe, and emerging markets -- not the U.S.IBM shares rose $5.26 to close at $102.93 Monday when it issued its preliminary report and sparked a temporary jump in tech stocks overall. But ultimately most technology companies did not fare well on the market this week.AMD on Thursday reported a loss for the fourth quarter&#160;due mostly to charges connected to its acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI. AMD had a net loss of $1.8 billion and revenue of only $1.8 billion. Because the loss was smaller than expected, the beleaguered chip maker was rewarded in a down market Friday, when its shares rose by $0.70 to close at $7.04Meanwhile,&#160;Intel Tuesday announced a revenue increase for the fourth quarter that fell short of analysts&#39; estimates, in part due to weak prices for memory chips. The company said revenue was $10.7 billion, up 10.5 percent, but missed the $10.8 billion estimated by analysts polled by Thomson Financial. Intel shares lost $2.81 Wednesday to close at $19.88, further declining during the rest of the week.The Intel first-quarter revenue outlook is particularly disappointing, according to CitiGroup Capital Markets analyst Glen Yeung. Yeung expects a downward revision of the 2008 revenue outlook because while Intel is benefiting from market share gains against AMD, the U.S. economy is having a worse impact than expected.Acquisitions did provide some excitement this week.&#160;Oracle Wednesday announced a deal to buy BEA Systems for about $8.5 billion. Oracle shares gained $0.61 to close at $21.92 Wednesday on the news, flattening out over the rest of the week in the down market. The deal makes Oracle the biggest player in middleware, ahead of even IBM, pointed out JMP securities analyst Patrick Walravens in a research note.Sun&#39;s $1 billion acquisition of MySQL, also announced Wednesday, was looked on favorably by traders as well. Sun is buying an open-source database used by some of the most widely trafficked Web sites in the world, such as Facebook and Google. Sun also said that next week it expects to report net income of $89 million for the quarter ending Dec. 31, compared to a loss of $56 million for the same period in 2006. Sun shares gained $0.55 Wednesday to close at $15.53, and rose slightly over the rest of the week even as most other stocks declined.
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Intel racked up some serious karmic debt when it schemed to run AMD out of the PC processor business. Xeon now languishes in Opteronâs shadow, which strikes me as just desserts for some nasty business.
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SAN FRANCISCO - As expected, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (AMD's) third-quarter revenue came in a little under the company's earlier predictions, but strong increases in sales of its 64-bit desktop and server processors led to the company's fourth straight profitable quarter.
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In an announcement before semiconductor engineers in San Francisco this morning, AMD and IBM put forth proof of what could be their breakthrough process - their response to Intel in the race to reduction.  It could pull AMD back even with Intel by 2008, if Intel doesn't respond in the intervening months.
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Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) continues to plug away at microprocessor rival Intel&#39;s (Nasdaq: INTC) lead, which once seemed insurmountable.