Auf dem "Spring Developer Forum", das von Dienstag bis Donnerstag in San Francisco stattfindet, wird Intel seine neuen Strategien (auch im Kampf gegen AMD) vorstellen.
Intel's Chance to Strut Its StuffBy William Gabrielski
3/6/2006 3:09 PM EST
www.thestreet.comIntel's spring developer forum is likely to catch more news coverage than usual following last week's negative earnings preannouncement.
Investors are hoping that the forum, which runs from Tuesday to Thursday in San Francisco, will make clear what the troubled semiconductor giant is doing on the research and development front to combat Advanced Micro Devices, which of late has been beating Intel on price, speed and energy efficiency with its server chips.
A scan of the blogs and Wall Street research shows that
expectations are that Intel will focus on improving speed and energy efficiency, which makes sense because these two metrics are what led Google (GOOG:Nasdaq) to choose servers with AMD chips. The metrics are also why server companies like Rackable Systems (RACK:Nasdaq) that use low-power consumption as a selling point use AMD chips.
According to research firm JMP Securities, Intel will announce an aggressive rollout schedule for low-power consumption chips for desktops, notebooks and servers. Its next-generation chips, expected to come to market in the third quarter, will have a 64-bit, dual-core architecture that should deliver enhanced performance and power management. JMP believes the company will use its new product launches later this year to solidify its No. 1 position in notebooks and stop some of the bleeding on the server side.
However, analyst Suji De Silva at Cathay Financial noted in a recent research report that he remains cautious on Intel in the near term, regardless of the pending releases, because Intel needs to regain its competitive momentum.
Even if the company does regain sales-volume momentum, it may have to do so at the expense of pricing, so De Silva is modeling for muted operating leverage and gross margin declines.Intel's failure to innovate isn't for lack of trying. On an absolute dollar basis, Intel has outspent AMD by $17.7 billion over the past five years, though AMD's R&D spending is up a total of 75% over that period vs. 35% growth at Intel.
The technology consumer has become much savvier as prices for desktops and notebooks have come down in recent years. A lot of what drove Intel's strength early this decade and in the 1990s was the ignorance of first-time computer buyers who believed "Intel Inside" meant the gold standard for PC processors.
Intel's not dead yet, but this week's product announcements need to show the company is living true to former CEO Andy Grove's maxim: Only the paranoid survive.