The Business of Technology: Intel Q3 2007
by Ryan Smith on October 30, 2007 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Bulldozer
In our first Business of Technology article, we took a look at the audio industry's falling star, Creative Labs. As the first in a new series of articles we were especially interested in feedback from you, the reader, and were not disappointed. Thank you for that feedback, it hasn't fallen on deaf ears and has gone into improving this and future Business of Technology articles.
With that out of the way, for our second article in this series we'll jump right into the fray and take a look at one of the titans of the computer industry: Intel. Intel has a long and rich history; so long in fact that the company existed before most of the AnandTech staff, a bit of a rarity in the computer industry. It's the long history of Intel and the ramifications of such that make it such an interesting and unusual company to fully grasp.
While we take a look at a number of Intel products here at AnandTech, few people actually realize the scope of the company - from our reviews you would think that Intel is a processor company, a chipset company, a motherboard company, and that's it. In reality they're also a major player in wireless communications, graphics (albeit integrated), flash memory, networking, embedded chips, and more. Processors are their biggest source of revenue and profit by far, but the other groups nevertheless still play a part.
As is customary with this series, today we'll take a look at Intel from both sides - business and technology - to understand what the company has been doing the past quarter, and where they are going in the near future. Intel is of course a very powerful technology company, but they also do a solid job of managing their overall business interests. As we'll see, this has made Intel a very solid company over the past quarter, but also one that will be fighting against growth concerns.
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Pyramix - Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - link
I think Intel benefits from the drop in the dollar value, since a lot of their revenue is overseas. But just how much does it benefit? And what's expected for the next quarter?nigham - Wednesday, October 31, 2007 - link
The numbers are close to impossible to read. A larger display on the main screen for both indices would be appreciated.AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
Intel is huge, and they drive the industry. It's like they've already won, 10 years ago, and there's little room to grow. Conroe is the holy grail of CPUs, and Intel also leads process technologies. It's depressing to see their layoff numbers. Their future regarding multi processors and Havok is very interesting. As for the business side of things, they're here to stay, huge and profitable.DAE612 - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
I think the author is on track in terms of worries about growth, but a few points missing:* Emerging markets: If the middle class of India, China etc continues to grow at the current rate, there will be a new large and increasing market for Intel's products. (the article seemed to imply that there will be no new possible buyers).
* AMD: The current debt situation and AMD's lag after Intel in terms of process technology is a possible upside only partly priced into the stock. What happens to Intel's margins if AMD goes down the drain ..
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
The problem with the emerging markets is that right now Intel isn't in a position to secure them. Both China in particular has a very protectionist policy, and while India isn't so severe, both countries also need processors cheaper than what Intel can do today. These are situations where to reach a large portion of the population, a computer needs to cost as little as a low-end E4 series chip in the first place.Intel doesn't have a chip that cheap yet. Their new x86 chips for mobile devices are their best bet (the codename escapes me at the moment), they're cheap to manufacture and use little power (great for places where such power can be irregular). But that's not going to be ready until later in 2008, and Intel would need to put together a whole prototype platform to fly the idea to potential ODMs.
sonoran - Friday, November 2, 2007 - link
>>The problem with the emerging markets is that right now Intel isn't in a position to secure them. Both China in particular has a very protectionist policyYou may want to note that Intel is currently building a large fab in China. No doubt that is for political, as well as economic, reasons.
The low cost chip you refer to is Silverthorne. I believe it's primarily intended for the MID (Mobile Internet Device) market. But with processing power roughly equivalent to the original Centrino, it would do fine for web surfing and moderate home use. And it will be really cheap to produce.
npoe1 - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
I liked a lot your Creative’s article; this is a good one too. But I would like to see an IBM and a Software company different from Microsoft for one of this analysis.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
We will likely cover those companies, but it won't be right away. There's no real need to cover most companies quarterly, when a yearly basis will do fine. For IBM their year is the calendar year, so we'd do something about them in Jan/Feb of 2008. For Microsoft it's a bit trickier, they're on a fiscal year that ends on June 31st, so we're already 4 months in to their new year.Chaotic42 - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
Call me crazy, but I'd like to see articles on companies like Sun and SGI, technical companies that a lot of us don't hear about too often, but which still might be up to interesting things.Just a thought.
Iketh - Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - link
agreed, im not looking forward to the AMD article at all... let's dive into something different