Intel Slammed As Apple Becomes More Appealing
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Tech stocks were mixed for the holiday week, with analyst revisions moving key sector players. Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) shares fell tumbled Tuesday after Credit Suisse First Boston lowered the
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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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Company will break its promise to deliver a speedier chip, shifts focus to dual-core designs. Intel has confirmed its near-term plans for its desktop processors before it reaches the multicore era.
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Chip maker Intel Corp. has announced plans to improve its flagship products in ways that could redefine the role of a microprocessor in a computer and help the company stay ahead of its competitors.
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Intel began to downplay so-called clock speed of processors within the past year, and other chipmakers followed suit, focusing on other advances such as dual-core, which essentially puts two
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Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday updated its iMac line with Intel Corp.'s latest microprocessors.
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Intel has introduced a new addition to its line of budget Celerons and a new chipset. The new products will spearhead its attack on the Christmas market with a view to fending off the challenge of AMDs new Sempron range.
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Attendees at Apple Expo in Paris are impressed at the look of the new iMac G5, but mixed on whether it&#39;s the right solution for their needs.
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Apple is apparently considering Intel's upcoming low-power chip for use in 2008, but it's not likely that it will have Intel inside the iPhone next year.
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Over the last year, Intel has changed its approach to the processor market and now wants to develop features for specific products, such as desktops, notebooks and handhelds, to make those devices easier to use and more secure.
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IDF Fall '04 As Intel prepares to detail its own multi-core chips
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel Corp.'s decision to begin shipping versions of x86 processors that are capable of 64-bit computing has slowed down the adoption of the company's high-end Itanium processors, a senior executive acknowledged Tuesday during a question and answer session at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco.
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Intel creates a more powerful memory chip without increasing its size, confounding the firm's critics.
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Apple Computer may be facing greater difficulties than previously thought in getting hold of chips to power its high-end personal computers.
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SEPTEMBER 20, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Further pitting itself against Intel Corp.&#39;s Pentium-M offerings, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
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Intel-rivaling chipmaker does not immediately explain why its first-quarter sales will fall short of its previous estimates.
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A backlog of Apple notebooks at Best Buy could be yet another sign that new MacBooks with Intel's latest chips are around the corner.