Intel: Desktop PC sales not slowing as predicted
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(InfoWorld) - Predictions that growing demand for notebook PCs would result in a corresponding slowdown in demand for desktops haven't come to pass, Intel's top executive in Asia said. "Pretty much all of our forecasts have understated mobile [growth] and have also suggested that at some point desktop [growth] will flatten out or even start to decline," said John Antone, vice president and general manager of Intel Asia-Pacific, in a telephone interview. "The good news is that mobile continues to grow a little bit faster than we forecast and desktop has not contracted," Antone said. Intel, the largest provider of microprocessors used in PCs, saw its finances buoyed byÂ growing demand for PCs. On Tuesday, the company said its second-quarter revenue was $8.7 billion, up 8 percent over the same period. Second-quarterÂ profit rose 44 percentÂ over the same period last year, to $1.3 billion. Intel doesn't break out its revenue by specific product type, but does provide a breakdown by business unit. For example, Intel's Mobility Group, which makes chips for notebooks, saw microprocessor sales rise from almost $2 billion during the second quarter of 2006 to nearly $2.4 billion during the second quarter of 2007. The strong growth in mobile processor sales was largely due to the launch of Santa Rosa, an upgraded version of Intel's Centrino chip package. Intel's desktop processor sales are harder to determine, as they are spread across different business groups. But Intel said desktop processor shipments were up during the second quarter, despite generating less revenue as a result of a price war with Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD) that hit prices for low. "Desktop unit demand came in higher than seasonal with strength across the board while revenue was lower on a year-over-year basis," said Paul Otellini, Intel's president and CEO, during a conference call with investors. Predictions that desktop PC sales would decline as notebook shipments grow underestimated the demand from emerging markets. While desktop shipments in the U.S. and Western Europe have indeed declined, the market for desktop PCs has shifted to emerging countries, where such systems continue to be in high demand, Antone said. "That frontier of where computing is getting to continues to push forward, and so the overall total unit volume for desktops has continued to be slightly up. It hasn't contracted on a worldwide basis yet," he said. Â
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Intel Corp.  on Thursday canceled plans to introduce its highest-speed desktop computer chip, ending for now a 25-year run that has seen the speeds of Intel's microprocessors increase by more than 750 times.
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Lower prices and improved laptop performance will fuel continued growth in PC sales this year and next, says the market analysis firm.
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Intel Corp.&#39;s fourth-quarter sales are on track to break a company record as demand for the chips that power computers was stronger than originally expected in the weeks leading up to the holiday buying season.
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Microprocessor giant Intel slightly exceeded the lowered third-quarter expectations it had set for itself last month. But growth was inhibited by inventory adjustments at some of major customers and lower than expected PC demand.
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(InfoWorld) - PCs sales for India grew 19 percent over the same period in the previous year, mainly on strong buying from a number of market segments including e-governance projects and the outsourcing industry, a hardware vendor group said Wednesday. A total of 2.96 million PCs were sold in the six months ended September 30 last year, the Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT), an association in Delhi of computer hardware vendors, said Wednesday. PC sales are forecast to be close to 6.5 million for the Indian fiscal year ending March 31, primarily because of the strong Indian economy, the group said. Notebook sales grew by 180 percent in the six months to September 30, while the growth in desktop sales was about 8 percent, according to MAIT data.Â IntelÂ has forecast that the Indian market is moving towards buying more notebooks than desktop computers because of the mobility they offer. A number of multinational and local brands have slashed prices on their entry-level notebooks to cash in on this new market opportunity. Desktop sales still outstrip notebook sales in India, with sales of notebooks accounting for about 15 percent of all PC sales, MAIT said. Sales of unbranded desktops grew at 27 percent to capture a 40 percent share of the desktop market, despite aggressive price cuts by multinational and local brands. Intel, through its Genuine Intel Dealer (GID) program, has given some legitimacy to this otherwise unorganized sector, consisting to a significant extent of out-of-garage assembly operations. Vendors of unbranded PCs, besides having a strong presence in small towns, also offer lower prices and personalized support. Intel has been assisting some of these vendors to also get into the assembly of notebooks. Multinational PC brands accounted for 37 percent of the desktop market, registering growth of 14 percent. The share of Indian brands fell from 31 percent to 23 percent, after a decline in sales of 20 percent. Business buyers accounted for 77 percent of desktop sales during the period, with home users accounting for the remaining 23 percent. Buyers of notebook computers for home use also increased because of their reduced prices, and accounted for one-third of notebook sales, MAIT said.
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Microsoft's decision to push back a 64-bit Windows will not hurt chip sales, company says.
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Strong demand and reduced stockpiles foretell a dramatic rise in chip giant Intel&#39;s sales outlook, the firm says. The company, whose chips power most of the world&#39;s PCs, said it expected sales of $9.3-9.5bn
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(InfoWorld) - The PC is changing. Once simply a computer with spreadsheets for the family budget and games for the kids, home PCs are rapidly evolving into home entertainment systems, equipped with digital television tuners, high-definition displays, and other features drawn from consumer electronics. Globally, media PCs represent a fraction -- just 5 percent -- of desktop computer sales, said Eric Kim, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Home Group, during a speech at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan. While media PC sales are relatively small at present, they will represent 30 percent of desktop sales by 2008, he said. While the rest of the world slowly warms to media PCs, the systems already dominate computer sales in Japan. "More than 60 percent of desktops sold in Japan today are already some kind of media PC," he said. Media PCs are big sellers in Japan because most homes here are small, putting a premium on the use of space. As a result, home PCs usually double as an entertainment system, making computers with these features popular among end users. This love affair with the media PC was readily apparent at Ceatec, where local PC makers showed off their newest products. At NEC's booth, the companyÂ showed off its Valuestar X PC, which will be available later this year for Â¥543,000 ($4,612). Based on a 3.4GHz Intel processor, the water-cooled PC offers dual 250GB hard drives, a Blu-ray disc drive, and a 20-inch widescreen LCD (liquid crystal display). At Sony's booth, the companyÂ showed several Vaio PC modelsÂ that had home-entertainment capabilities. One of them, the Vaio Type L VGC-LA915 integrates the components of a computer into the back of a 19-inch widescreen LCD (liquid crystal display) screen. The computer, which is priced at Â¥359,800 includes a Blu-ray Disc drive and remote control for watching high-definition movies. A smaller version with a 15.4-inch display, includes an attached keyboard that can be folded up against the display to save space. In addition to packing consumer-electronics features into their latest products, Japanese PC makers are also looking ahead, playing with new designs further tailored to the interests of end-users.Â One such design is Fujitsu's Turn Table PC, which adds the ability for DJs to spin and scratch using digital media files. The design, which may never enter production, calls for a 20-inch display that can be folded down to use the turn-table function. Outside of Japan, sales of media PCs will likely be driven by factors other than a desire to maximize the use of space in a home, said market analyst IDC in a recent report. Sales of media PCs will take off in the U.S. once a wider variety of content, especially video, is made available to end-users, it said. "The potential for that success is evidenced by iTunes' sale of 125,000 Disney movies in the first six days of its service offering," the report said, referring to Apple Computer's recently introduced video download service. Shipments of media PCs are expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 41 percent through 2010, when vendors will ship 27.5 million units, IDC said. This year, PC makers will ship 5.9 million media PCs, worth around $6 billion, it said.
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South African PC demand looks set to keep pace with the good worldwide demand, with rand strength, product bundling
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AMD got some much-needed good news this week when Gateway announced that it's trading in Intel chips for AMD Phenom quad-core processors in two new high-end desktop machines.Gateway, which has been mostly an Intel-only company for years, unveiled Wednesday AMD-based GM and GT series desktop systems. And for a microprocessor company that has been struggling with missed shipment dates, financial woes and a slide in mind share, this is welcome news, according to industry analysts."This is very positive for AMD," said Dean Freeman, an analyst at Gartner. "Almost any wins are good news for AMD at this time. AMD has been beaten down pretty hard lately, and this says someone thinks enough of them still to put their chips in their systems."Focusing on "media-hungry users", the new Gateway GM5664 desktop is geared toward gamers and users interested in video editing or watching live TV online. Available at U.S. retailers for $1,149.99, the computer also sports a "Hybrid-SuperMulti" optical drive that reportedly can read both HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies as well as read and burn CDs and standard-def DVDs.The Gateway GT5662, which prices in at $749.99, is a multimedia lite machine. This desktop uses the lower power AMD Phenom quad-core 9500 proccessor, a 500GB hard drive, and its own SuperMulti drive to enable users to burn content onto DVDs or CDs.Both Freeman and Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64, noted that by getting some AMD processors into the mix, Gateway is able to buy some of its chips for a lot less cash. "This allows Gateway to go ahead and lower margins or offer lower prices for customers," said Freeman. "Gateway is looking to make strategic moves to increase profitability."Having Gateway buy into its quad-core family isn't going to put AMD back on top by any means, noted Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata. "No specific OEM, especially a second-tier one, is going to change AMD's market position dramatically," he added. "That said, this is how companies need to build their market position -- one win at a time, whether big or small."
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SAN FRANCISCO: Intel upcoming mid-quarter report will be closely watched for signs of weak back-to-school computer sales, though recent market share gains in memory chips could help offset any softness in computer microprocessor demand.
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The world's largest chipmaker, Intel, boosts its prediction of sales for the final three months of the year to $9.3-9.5bn.
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Intel on Tuesday released third-quarter financial results showing that it continues to struggle to sell a substantial stockpile of computer chips as demand for personal computers remains slow.
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(InfoWorld) - Citing surprisingly high demand for its processors, Intel on Monday upgraded its third-quarter revenue forecast to a range of $9.4 billion to $9.8 billion from the company's previous estimate of $9 billion to $9.6 billion. Both ranges are far above Intel's results in the third quarter of 2006, when the company collected $8.7 billion in revenue, a 12 percent drop from the same quarter the previous year. Intel's sagging performance in 2006 led to a corporate restructuring plan including thousands of layoffs and the sale of several divisions. The company has posted muchÂ stronger results in 2007, despite a lingeringÂ price war with rival Advanced Micro Devices. In July, Intel beat Wall Street estimates with second-quarter revenue of $8.7 billion, with profit up 44 percent over the same period of last year. Intel's financials forecast upgrade came the same day thatÂ AMD launched its Barcelona quad-core Opteron server chip, which is expected to be a strong competitor to Intel's current server chips. However, Intel said its new forecast is generated by demand throughout its business units, including notebook and desktop chips as well as server processors. "We're seeing strength in revenue across the board," said Intel spokesman Tom Beermann. The company will give more detailed results when it reports its third-quarter earnings on Oct. 16. Also on Monday, Intel trimmed another business division, agreeing to sell certain assets of its modular communications platforms business, which makes telecommunications boards, to RadiSysÂ for $31.75 million. The parts of the division being sold to RadiSys make ATCA computing and packet processing blades, ATCA chassis, AMC modules, and cPCI blades and chassis. The deal with RadiSys did not contribute to Intel's revised revenue forecast today, Beermann said. Intel expects "a significant number" of employees to accept new job offers and move to RadiSys, but has not estimated the number. They will include workers in the engineering, product testing/validation, operations and marketing departments. RadiSys makes ATCA platforms and other products for telecommunication equipment manufacturers. The deal is expected to close in September. Â
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PC buying uptick won't last. Corporations are upgrading at a normal pace, while consumers who waited for Vista have now made the switch.
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Intel Corp.&#39;s upcoming mid-quarter report will be closely watched for signs of weak back-to-school computer sales, though recent market share gains in memory chips could help offset any softness in computer microprocessor demand.