Rather than use that fab capacity to make a tablet chip that can compete on price, they just idle their fabs so that they can continue to force ivy bridge slate prices to remain at the $800-$1000 mark so they can continue to be eviscerated by crapple. Smart, smart strategy! If I can get an atom tablet for $450 there aint no reason in hell I shouldnt be able to get a celeron ULV tablet for $50 more. Intel has been selling 10W celeron/pentiums for 5 years now, for $78 or even lower.
It takes time to move any processor to a new fabrication process, the article says that most of the idle fabs are 22nm, which neither the regular or smartphone Atom is at yet.
It's not just a case of moving the atom to a new process. The atom is built on a different process than Intel's other CPUs. The Atom is built on a low power process, everything else from the Celeron to the Xeon uses a high performance process. The performance process is about 10% faster at the cost of higher leakage current, etc (don't recall how much this hurts).
Intel's low power process has always lagged behind their high power one by about a year; I believe the plan is to catch up so that beginning with 14nm the low and high power processes initial production dates are in sync with each other.
The just need to foundry for Apple. Money and fab cap solved. Intel won't foundry but it would be cool to see 22nm and below arm chips a year or two early.
Personally, I think that's out of the question. Apple is already too big for Intel's liking. Maybe for some other companies in the future, but I don't see it for Apple. Unless Apple is using some mobile chip from Intel,I don't see any way Intel will foundry for Apple.
On the other hand Intel did talk about starting to manufacture other peoples processors earlier this year I think, and a customer is a customer. Look at Apple and Samsung, still leaning heavily on each other despite everything. A company can't say no to money.
I read it some where that Apple and Samsung is breaking up in chip manufacturing. So Apple needs to find itself a new foundary to work with, maybe intel is the key, but I highly doubt it. Just like some other commentor mentioned before, Apple is already too big for intel's like. Plus some other rumor about Apple moving away from intel's x86 chips, that will definitely stir up more bad feelings between the 2.
I think one of the key factor here is Steve J, Tim Cook is no Steve J, he can't fight with a company and then makeup with them instantly. Since Steve J(please clone him and bring him back, lol) is no more, I'm interest in what Apple's move next.
The only reasonable alternative to Samsung foundary is intel.
I'm also interest in intel getting into the ultra low power cpu, I heard the intel-powered Razr M is not bad. I'm interesting in more of their offerings in 2013.
I'm not sure Intel is the only alternative (although with their process lead they're probably the best one if willing). Rumors about a deal with TSMC have been floating around recently. Global Foundries could certainly use the business; and Apple's both shown a willingness to dump its money into component makers to accelerate their production of new devices and one of the few companies that actually has deep enough pockets to conceivably pull them out of their tailspin. Beyond that IBM still has a CPU foundry; although I don't know if they have a low power process or not.
"The hard drive shortage that initially pulled down the PC industry"
That is just bull. The real reason is the iPad effect. Intel lost 20% market share to tablets last year. That is the real reason. All computer manufactures had long term hard drives contract and had no problem. The hard drive shortage only lead to inflated prises for non-contract customers. You could always buy hard drive.
Its strange that tablets are not computers. The ASP of an iPad is higher then he ASP of a PC. And its there the money goes. Its not a slump. Its a market that is shifting to another technology.
BTW The decline of the PC market include Apple that grows. The PC market fell about 6% last year. If you take out Apple, the PC market fell over 10%.
Intel needs to realise that ARM is quickly taking market share from X86. Only then can Intel change strategy. If Intel continue to lie to them self they will join companies like RIM and Nokia.
X86 will be a niche chip. The wast majority will be RISC/ARM.
Intel has very smart people, and they are experts at execution. To think they are dismissive of the ARM threat to their business would be to dismiss their current roadmap. The statements you see from them are carefully crafted PR to their shareholders. They are moving as fast as they can to go lower in power to better compete in the ultra mobile space. Intel is a big ship and it takes years to make a course correction. They are in the middle of that shift now, but the question is if they will be too late. The good thing is, we will all find out.
Does anyone know how big a war chest Intel is sitting on if times get really tough?
I totally agree with you. Intel can be scary when it means it, just look at the recent history of P4 -> Conroe period, Intel executed their plan well(though with some "unethical" methods).
I am very interest in them getting into the ultra low powered cpu, expecting to see more phones and tablets based on intel in 2013.
Their competitive products, Ultrabooks, have been stale as far as sales go. And quite frankly, it's no wonder. They don't offer anything but "thin" at the expense of battery life, a 17W ULV processor and an inflated price tag.
So when faced with the issue of backed up stock, instead of decreasing prices significantly in order to make their current products more attractive, Intel has decided to let their fabs sit idle? Wasn't it just this week they announced that they're aiming at a 70% Ivy Bridge/22nm penetration rate?
If Intel really wanted to compete, they'd be dropping the price to spur on more sales of their current products rather than keep prices the same level and ignore the ARM threat. I know Intel has already claimed that ARM is its biggest competitor going forward, but this doesn't sound like they're willing to play ball. Unfortunately for Intel, I don't see tablet and smartphone sales decreasing, but I most certainly do see a slipping PC market.
I don't disagree, but the consumer in me doesn't seem to care, nor will others. Unless tray prices decrease across the board and the cost savings are in turn reflected in product pricing, the sales figures aren't going to recover any time soon. The fact is, people have been buying the shiny mobile gadgets and not Ultrabooks, PCs and laptops, and that trend doesn't seem to be reversing. Part of this stems from pricing and lack of interesting products. Ultrabooks are fancy, but they don't offer anything special and are far too expensive. When confronted with an iPad 3 or an Ultrabook with a TN panel, 6 hour realistic battery life and 4lb weight, they've been consistently picking the tablet.
Rather than attacking the issue head on with lower pricing and better product lines, Intel has decided to let fabs sit idle and prices stagnate?
Intel has lost less than 20% of laptop sells by people shifting from laptops to tablets. If a laptop is $700 dollars do you think they are going to suddenly recover lots of sales if the laptop is now $600 dollars? The answer is no they will not recover those 20% of sales even with a $100 dollar price drop. Yet by lowering the price a $100 dollars their recommended tray price drops from $225 to about $125 or a reduction of margin of 50%. Those 20% of lost sales are gone forever with the current cpus and <b>droping prices will not lead to profit maximization.</b>
--------
What will lead to profit maximization will be creating new markets with those laptop cpus, by introducing those cpus into form factors such as tablets. To do this they will have to lower their average tdp for a laptop cpu from 35watts to something less than 10 watts and preferably less than 5 watts so it can be fanless. Well guess what intel design targets for mobile has been recently 35 watts was sandybridge / arrandale 17 watts for ivybridge 10 watts for haswell
these are the tdp numbers for processor + northbridge n series notebook dual core models 14 watts total =8 watts Atom 330 + 6 watts 945GSE chipset 8.5 watts Atom n570 3.5 watts Atom n2600 1.7 watts Atom z2760 true systems on a chip
You are right intel has not been pushing fast enough with atom on lowering the power consumption and increasing the performance yet it seems intel has now gotten the message time will tell if intel has learned its lesson. Furthermore intel has been a prisoner to the windows/intel alliance and the fact windows has not been pursuing tablets until recently with the upcoming windows 8. This was a mistake for intel not trying to get an android or other serious tablet os until then, but maybe this was a fatal mistake if windows 8 actually sells as a tablet os.
It isn't like Intel is going to make any money selling the chips at half price.
The PC market just isn't there. People are going with tablets, smart phones.
I am losing Internet customers to Verizon and AT&T. People that aren't big Internet users are just going with a smartphone and dropping the land line, high speed, etc.
The only reason they still have a PC is because it is paid for and something for the kids/grandkids to goof on.
Essentially it comes down to the PC people have PC's, they'll keep them for years.
The email and pics people don't care. They push a button and sync everything up and really wish there was a way to permanently save those pics...
I'm going to cry bull on this one. The iPad is a great device, but I don't know anyone who uses one as a 'daily driver' yet. It is a nice PC accessory, but not (yet) powerful or functional enough to be a replacement.
Long story short: If intel cannot get into phones and tablets, then they are doomed. Not because people will not buy their products when needed, but because there is less need for the PC market. 5 year old desktops and 3 year old laptops are more than good enough for most people's workloads. They play back video, do light games, and are great for productivity work like office or even simple video editing. Mainstream programs, and OSs are getting lighter and smaller, which breathes new life into these aging machines. 4GB of ram, and an SSD makes even the oldest C2Duo machines feel quite responsive and fast, so there is little need to replace the whole computer, and most people don't even need that much to be happy.
If people needed faster computers or laptops, they would buy them. The success of the highly overpriced tablets is proof that the money is out there, but people do not have a need or even a real want for a faster machine, so things slow down on the old markets where people are generally happy, and new markets rise up to take their place. Intel is Intel's biggest competitor. If they just had crappier products for longer then people would still need the newest and greatest equipment.
I think you have underestimated the continued impact of the hard drive/flood fiasco. Hard drives have still not returned to pre-flood pricing. $50-100 per system on a grossly overinflated hard drive killed the margin of profit on a desktop PC for system builders. Seagate and WD know their days are numbered and are milking everyone for all they are worth. SSDs are falling in price but aren't rising in capacity quickly enough to really dethrone hard drives yet. They have also suffered a bloody nose due to manufacturers pushing them out the door with zero QA and terrible firmware, giving them a bad reliability reputation.
You also underestimate the psychological impact of the end of the GHZ WAR on Joe Average, the barely informed impulse buying consumer. With AMD basically dead on the CPU front, and Intel pushing tiny, incremental cpu updates with ambigious naming and high, static pricing, noone is buying a PC on impulse, bragging rights or prestige anymore. Before, upgrading from a p2-300 to a p3-600 meant WOW TWICE THE POWA now, Joe with his i5-6729067MarkII looks at the new i5-6729068LE system and says "HUH"
I dont believe many listened to the conference call and Q and A session. The problem is that inventories/channel are very very low so OEM/ODM have not been ordering Ivy Bridge products. This is why Intel is lowering utilization rate. A low inventory market can change very very quickly verses the article implied high inventory low sales. If the ODM/OEM start filling to normal levels, demand will increase significantly. Also Intel stated repeatedly that China market saw a sudden drop in demand. All across industrials this is playing out (non chip exports). Lastly, we have China changing governments shortly and the uncertainty in the policies that accompanies this. With Euro crisis, possible government change in US, the new China policies to be determined, everyone is very cautious currently across all industries not just chip manufacturing. I believe this is the real explaination to their earnings and actions.
...you'd think there was a world wide economic depression that has been in effect for over four years and counting. Either that of Intel is trying to sell over-priced, under-performing laptops for an outrageous price?
3 billion in NET income!!!!! NET!!!! OMG!!!! Hey Intel, you guys think I can get a desktop CPU clocked over 3GHZ with 4 cores that runs 8 threads under 200 bucks? Please! I mean, fuck, 3 BILLION....NET!!!!!! And I still can't have a hyper-threaded quad core for 200 bucks.... just.... NET!!!!! Fucking flying monkeys fucked you sideways twice on Sunday. Hyperthreaded quad core, I wanna see the cost of materials, bill of sales on that right now. NET!!!! Maybe it should only be 100 dollars.
each day I get at least ten news about consumers shifting to tablet and the PC market is a sunset industry. how much does the consumer segment contribute to Intel's revenue, really? 90%?
I thought Intel would be more interested to sell more Xeon (high margin) than pentium or core i3? And when enterprises upgrade, they buy in bulk volume (100, 1000, 5000 units) and enterprises and SME definitely aren't moving away from PCs anytime soon. is tablet really killing Intel, or is it the slowing economy that's causing more harm?
28nm part contributes only 8% to TMSC's Q2 revenue. Forecast 14% for Q3. It just shows the lead Intel has over rivals in fabrication tech. Say if samsung / tmsc had yield issues beyond 22nm, what would to Apple's wonder chips?
Man that is bad news. It probably also shows the overall industrial production capacity have low forecast, and therefore investments are kept low.
I am surprised Intel lower q4 forecast this late. AMD must be way over their head, when even the money machine slips. Even a piledriver times 3 can save them.
No price cuts=you got all the bleeding edge buyers...You'll now have to drop prices to spur sales. Get over the $329 newegg price and maybe I'll bit. No $309 on sale won't do it either. Release a new bleeding edge model and shove down the i3770K. Heck maybe sell a few below $200 and maybe people will buy some more. Just drop the ultrabooks, nobody buys them. I said this ages ago. Color me shocked regarding their ultrabook sales...ROFL. You couldn't sell those at $200-300 less. Witness the $249 google laptop bomb. 65% margins is over as Arm moves in at 40-50% (less?).
I'll be more than happy to just get a 660ti for xmas and put off your chip until haswell if needed. I won't give up $329 for your chip that is barely better than a sandy in most things. I don't rip etc, so I'm only after cpu IPC etc which is going nowhere fast since AMD keeps cutting engineers and falling even further behind. When I buy a movie (as rare as that may be) I can download it ripped from pro's already faster than I can do it to my own movie I just purchased. Odds are a 6-9pass CCE from them will beat whatever I can do alone. I really don't understand anyone who rips (quicksync is useless to me with unlimited internet - netflix/hulu kills 1/2 the point of this too). With most devices hitting 720p & above, no point in ripping. You can watch the same file played on your phone/tablet that you do on TV. With Plexapp it usually doesn't matter what format it's in either in house. The device doesn't even do the crunching, your PC/server does.
Also note, people are halting purchased due to win8. I think they're waiting for it to hit, to see what everyone thinks before biting. At that point you'll see Dell/HP etc shipping win7 and putting 8 ads behind win7 ads on their respective sites :) Dell/HP already said Win8's slow update is hurting sales. Gee, pitch 7 and say you don't need 8, watch sales go up. Some think buying 8 is a waste, and don't get that 7 would be fine. A good portion of the people put off by 8, might actually have win9 in their heads now...LOL. MS better make Win9 a winxp/7 instead of a me/vista or this will just happen again. If people in IT don't like your beta, switch gears as we'll all tell our management to run from winX like the plague (just like we did with Vista). This kills your training/cert money too (and companies that rely on it). Nobody made much off their Vista training. Trainsignal, Nuggets, Learnkey (Learnsmart/Preplogic now) etc would all say this I'd guess. I never paid for ANY vista training in any way shape or form. The WINTEL platform better start paying more attention to USERS rather than catering to DRM from hollywood etc and pandering to people that aren't USING their crap or ARM/Android (chrome, whatever) will start eating their lunch for real. They'd better start pandering to US, the users!
Check out the graphics, and NOTE the mention of TEGRA specific optimizations. These will look and play better on NV based ARM chips. http://www.intomobile.com/2012/06/05/nvidia-announ... By next xmas consoles will have competition as even more get announced. This was 5 months ago mind you at GDC 2012. I have seen NO OTHER company pay to get games better on their chip and NV has a LONG history of doing this on the desktop as alluded to in the anandtech 680m vs 7970m grudge match a few days ago. I mean how the heck do you get your chip to run 2x faster in Diablo3 than the competing top of the line GPU? OPTIMIZE the games for your stuff and cozy up to game devs!
Waving goodbye to x86 (NVDA revenge for Intel booting them from chipsets?) http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/11/14/nv... Make no mistake this is Jen Hsun's goal...LOL. 20nm Denver taped out 6 months ago :) OUCH. Sammy+NV hookup=Intel competition. This is also bad news for AAPL who now has to depend on TSMC after pissing on Samsung for so long with the lawsuits. You reap what you sew correct? I think them leaving on their own was sort of like, quitting before your fired to save face :) Good luck with TSMC apple :) Now they can fight with QCOM/AMD for fab space (bad for AMD who has no money for preferential treatment, I'm sure apple will get their chips in volume - which may be bad for snapdragons future volume wise). Name a chip that has come from AMD/NV etc on time and in volume with high yields in the last 5yrs from TSMC. I don't think I can.
Once games are made all over and at high qual on NV/Android all platforms are in trouble (consoles/Wintel PC's/AMD). This is rimm all over again. Once Enterprise email was on apple etc the party was over. You're not special now, and profits tank. The same can be said about Wintel/DirectX. Google already has Apps which makes Office moot for a lot of people. The only thing left making Wintel desired is GAMES. We can't run to linux, no games (well, not many). But Android won't have that problem by next xmas. Should have some great ones, even oldies like Baldurs 1 & 2 enhanced by then (B1 enhanced comes out next month on android and iphone, two next year, then finally BALDURS 3, yeah baby). If all the Tegra work pays off for other chipmakers also then this will happen very quickly as android phones sell 3 or 4to1 vs. iphone now. That's a crapload of devices to dev a game for and Torchlight ceo just proved he makes the same $14 on a $20 game that he did selling a $60 at retail. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-09-18-t...
Why dev for WINTEL purely, when you can dev for 1Bil+ devices and port to Wintel if needed (much like console games get ported now - I see consoles dead next xmas as MS/Sony see the writing on the wall and just give this up)? Unreal 3 engine already runs buttery smooth according to Epic on Tegra3. I'm sure NV is putting a Tegra 4 in game devs hands as we speak 6 months after taped out samples popped off Samsungs 20nm process. No fan in the $249 laptop is impressive and it's not 20nm AFAIK. Surface better come out at $300-350 or they'll get killed. Which is kind of Google's point I guess. Dominate the market via volume, then cash in once games are out to play on just about everything currently held in people's hands. Good strategy.
If the next rev of Googles tablet type device is Tegra4 they'll get 3 sales from my family immediately at these insane prices. This will replace the need for a new Wintel laptop (which I need as mine is 7-8yrs old now, but was top of the line back then, NV 6800Go in it still does pretty good in games), and can be HDMI'd to a 24in easily at 1920x1200 or 1080P. We will basically get 2 laptop's replaced with these and the 3rd just so mom has one too...LOL. If it doubles as an xbox/ps2 replacement (I have both) and browses on TV when desired we won't hesitate. We may be put off a few months waiting for features, but surely a lot of people here will be in the same situation or close to it. We have 2 old high end lappy's to replace but are basically waiting for these, just a bit more powerful as I want it to replace the xbox360 sufficiently. Check out all the unreal 3 based games above. As the rest jump to mobile, these will become no brainer purchases for xmas gifts next year. That will be a major dent in any sales of 400-700 units from xbox720/ps4. A ton of people still don't have PS3/xbox360. Wave a PC replacement that doubles as ps3/xbox360 replacements and consoles are dust. Kids can do work (out to monitor/key/mouse setup in bedroom etc) and play on tv when desired with any xbox/ps/pc wireless controller. This is probably why MotelyFool picked NV as the next stock of the decade and 100bil company.
With sammy pulling down 8B this quarter vs. Intel's 3B, it's clear with NV's huge keplers taking fab space as Apple vacates they'll be cashing in for a while even without apple's volume (kepler ~294? if memory serves, is much bigger than A6 ~97mm). Samsung should have no trouble keeping fabs full with 3x bigger gpus coming into play along with tegra's and their own selling 20mil in 3 months. What would happen if kepler ends up in a google laptop with android games out and about? Dead or severely weakened AMD, NV could lock out Intel from their GPU's and move to Mobile & chrome based PC's. Devs would obviously dev for NV over Intel gpu's so things can change here quickly if WIntel doesn't watch out. Remember how fast 3DFX went down? How fast Rimm has gone down? It happens very quickly today. I'm just saying... :) Intel must be sweating bullets over ARM (no matter who leads that charge - or the whole freaking group of soc makers).
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29 Comments
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Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
Rather than use that fab capacity to make a tablet chip that can compete on price, they just idle their fabs so that they can continue to force ivy bridge slate prices to remain at the $800-$1000 mark so they can continue to be eviscerated by crapple. Smart, smart strategy! If I can get an atom tablet for $450 there aint no reason in hell I shouldnt be able to get a celeron ULV tablet for $50 more. Intel has been selling 10W celeron/pentiums for 5 years now, for $78 or even lower.tipoo - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
It takes time to move any processor to a new fabrication process, the article says that most of the idle fabs are 22nm, which neither the regular or smartphone Atom is at yet.0ldman79 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
Agreed.Odds are Intel has been working on the Atom's move to the 22nm process for a while now, they're just not there yet.
DanNeely - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
It's not just a case of moving the atom to a new process. The atom is built on a different process than Intel's other CPUs. The Atom is built on a low power process, everything else from the Celeron to the Xeon uses a high performance process. The performance process is about 10% faster at the cost of higher leakage current, etc (don't recall how much this hurts).Intel's low power process has always lagged behind their high power one by about a year; I believe the plan is to catch up so that beginning with 14nm the low and high power processes initial production dates are in sync with each other.
Homeles - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
You don't understand how processor design works and the amount of time involved. Please educate yourself before making inane comments.semiconshawn - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
The just need to foundry for Apple. Money and fab cap solved. Intel won't foundry but it would be cool to see 22nm and below arm chips a year or two early.menting - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
Personally, I think that's out of the question.Apple is already too big for Intel's liking. Maybe for some other companies in the future, but I don't see it for Apple.
Unless Apple is using some mobile chip from Intel,I don't see any way Intel will foundry for Apple.
tipoo - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
On the other hand Intel did talk about starting to manufacture other peoples processors earlier this year I think, and a customer is a customer. Look at Apple and Samsung, still leaning heavily on each other despite everything. A company can't say no to money.amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I read it some where that Apple and Samsung is breaking up in chip manufacturing. So Apple needs to find itself a new foundary to work with, maybe intel is the key, but I highly doubt it. Just like some other commentor mentioned before, Apple is already too big for intel's like. Plus some other rumor about Apple moving away from intel's x86 chips, that will definitely stir up more bad feelings between the 2.I think one of the key factor here is Steve J, Tim Cook is no Steve J, he can't fight with a company and then makeup with them instantly. Since Steve J(please clone him and bring him back, lol) is no more, I'm interest in what Apple's move next.
The only reasonable alternative to Samsung foundary is intel.
I'm also interest in intel getting into the ultra low power cpu, I heard the intel-powered Razr M is not bad. I'm interesting in more of their offerings in 2013.
DanNeely - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I'm not sure Intel is the only alternative (although with their process lead they're probably the best one if willing). Rumors about a deal with TSMC have been floating around recently. Global Foundries could certainly use the business; and Apple's both shown a willingness to dump its money into component makers to accelerate their production of new devices and one of the few companies that actually has deep enough pockets to conceivably pull them out of their tailspin. Beyond that IBM still has a CPU foundry; although I don't know if they have a low power process or not.shompa - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
"The hard drive shortage that initially pulled down the PC industry"That is just bull. The real reason is the iPad effect. Intel lost 20% market share to tablets last year. That is the real reason. All computer manufactures had long term hard drives contract and had no problem. The hard drive shortage only lead to inflated prises for non-contract customers. You could always buy hard drive.
Its strange that tablets are not computers. The ASP of an iPad is higher then he ASP of a PC. And its there the money goes. Its not a slump. Its a market that is shifting to another technology.
BTW The decline of the PC market include Apple that grows. The PC market fell about 6% last year. If you take out Apple, the PC market fell over 10%.
Intel needs to realise that ARM is quickly taking market share from X86. Only then can Intel change strategy. If Intel continue to lie to them self they will join companies like RIM and Nokia.
X86 will be a niche chip. The wast majority will be RISC/ARM.
jamyryals - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
Intel has very smart people, and they are experts at execution. To think they are dismissive of the ARM threat to their business would be to dismiss their current roadmap. The statements you see from them are carefully crafted PR to their shareholders. They are moving as fast as they can to go lower in power to better compete in the ultra mobile space. Intel is a big ship and it takes years to make a course correction. They are in the middle of that shift now, but the question is if they will be too late. The good thing is, we will all find out.Does anyone know how big a war chest Intel is sitting on if times get really tough?
amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I totally agree with you.Intel can be scary when it means it, just look at the recent history of P4 -> Conroe period, Intel executed their plan well(though with some "unethical" methods).
I am very interest in them getting into the ultra low powered cpu, expecting to see more phones and tablets based on intel in 2013.
mrdude - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
Their competitive products, Ultrabooks, have been stale as far as sales go. And quite frankly, it's no wonder. They don't offer anything but "thin" at the expense of battery life, a 17W ULV processor and an inflated price tag.So when faced with the issue of backed up stock, instead of decreasing prices significantly in order to make their current products more attractive, Intel has decided to let their fabs sit idle? Wasn't it just this week they announced that they're aiming at a 70% Ivy Bridge/22nm penetration rate?
If Intel really wanted to compete, they'd be dropping the price to spur on more sales of their current products rather than keep prices the same level and ignore the ARM threat. I know Intel has already claimed that ARM is its biggest competitor going forward, but this doesn't sound like they're willing to play ball. Unfortunately for Intel, I don't see tablet and smartphone sales decreasing, but I most certainly do see a slipping PC market.
0ldman79 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
They still have to recoup the cost of R&D. They can't just drop the price on it because they want to.They are far ahead on the fab technology, but at a hefty cost. They're aggressive way of doing things may have left Intel in a bit of a bind.
Not that it will have any dramatic outcome, but an uncomfortable situation none the less.
mrdude - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I don't disagree, but the consumer in me doesn't seem to care, nor will others. Unless tray prices decrease across the board and the cost savings are in turn reflected in product pricing, the sales figures aren't going to recover any time soon. The fact is, people have been buying the shiny mobile gadgets and not Ultrabooks, PCs and laptops, and that trend doesn't seem to be reversing. Part of this stems from pricing and lack of interesting products. Ultrabooks are fancy, but they don't offer anything special and are far too expensive. When confronted with an iPad 3 or an Ultrabook with a TN panel, 6 hour realistic battery life and 4lb weight, they've been consistently picking the tablet.Rather than attacking the issue head on with lower pricing and better product lines, Intel has decided to let fabs sit idle and prices stagnate?
Roland00Address - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
Intel has lost less than 20% of laptop sells by people shifting from laptops to tablets. If a laptop is $700 dollars do you think they are going to suddenly recover lots of sales if the laptop is now $600 dollars? The answer is no they will not recover those 20% of sales even with a $100 dollar price drop. Yet by lowering the price a $100 dollars their recommended tray price drops from $225 to about $125 or a reduction of margin of 50%. Those 20% of lost sales are gone forever with the current cpus and <b>droping prices will not lead to profit maximization.</b>--------
What will lead to profit maximization will be creating new markets with those laptop cpus, by introducing those cpus into form factors such as tablets. To do this they will have to lower their average tdp for a laptop cpu from 35watts to something less than 10 watts and preferably less than 5 watts so it can be fanless. Well guess what intel design targets for mobile has been recently
35 watts was sandybridge / arrandale
17 watts for ivybridge
10 watts for haswell
these are the tdp numbers for processor + northbridge
n series notebook dual core models
14 watts total =8 watts Atom 330 + 6 watts 945GSE chipset
8.5 watts Atom n570
3.5 watts Atom n2600
1.7 watts Atom z2760 true systems on a chip
You are right intel has not been pushing fast enough with atom on lowering the power consumption and increasing the performance yet it seems intel has now gotten the message time will tell if intel has learned its lesson. Furthermore intel has been a prisoner to the windows/intel alliance and the fact windows has not been pursuing tablets until recently with the upcoming windows 8. This was a mistake for intel not trying to get an android or other serious tablet os until then, but maybe this was a fatal mistake if windows 8 actually sells as a tablet os.
0ldman79 - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Agreed.It isn't like Intel is going to make any money selling the chips at half price.
The PC market just isn't there. People are going with tablets, smart phones.
I am losing Internet customers to Verizon and AT&T. People that aren't big Internet users are just going with a smartphone and dropping the land line, high speed, etc.
The only reason they still have a PC is because it is paid for and something for the kids/grandkids to goof on.
Essentially it comes down to the PC people have PC's, they'll keep them for years.
The email and pics people don't care. They push a button and sync everything up and really wish there was a way to permanently save those pics...
CaedenV - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I'm going to cry bull on this one. The iPad is a great device, but I don't know anyone who uses one as a 'daily driver' yet. It is a nice PC accessory, but not (yet) powerful or functional enough to be a replacement.Long story short: If intel cannot get into phones and tablets, then they are doomed. Not because people will not buy their products when needed, but because there is less need for the PC market. 5 year old desktops and 3 year old laptops are more than good enough for most people's workloads. They play back video, do light games, and are great for productivity work like office or even simple video editing. Mainstream programs, and OSs are getting lighter and smaller, which breathes new life into these aging machines. 4GB of ram, and an SSD makes even the oldest C2Duo machines feel quite responsive and fast, so there is little need to replace the whole computer, and most people don't even need that much to be happy.
If people needed faster computers or laptops, they would buy them. The success of the highly overpriced tablets is proof that the money is out there, but people do not have a need or even a real want for a faster machine, so things slow down on the old markets where people are generally happy, and new markets rise up to take their place.
Intel is Intel's biggest competitor. If they just had crappier products for longer then people would still need the newest and greatest equipment.
Pessimism - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I think you have underestimated the continued impact of the hard drive/flood fiasco. Hard drives have still not returned to pre-flood pricing. $50-100 per system on a grossly overinflated hard drive killed the margin of profit on a desktop PC for system builders. Seagate and WD know their days are numbered and are milking everyone for all they are worth. SSDs are falling in price but aren't rising in capacity quickly enough to really dethrone hard drives yet. They have also suffered a bloody nose due to manufacturers pushing them out the door with zero QA and terrible firmware, giving them a bad reliability reputation.You also underestimate the psychological impact of the end of the GHZ WAR on Joe Average, the barely informed impulse buying consumer. With AMD basically dead on the CPU front, and Intel pushing tiny, incremental cpu updates with ambigious naming and high, static pricing, noone is buying a PC on impulse, bragging rights or prestige anymore.
Before, upgrading from a p2-300 to a p3-600 meant WOW TWICE THE POWA
now, Joe with his i5-6729067MarkII looks at the new i5-6729068LE system and says "HUH"
pityme1 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I dont believe many listened to the conference call and Q and A session. The problem is that inventories/channel are very very low so OEM/ODM have not been ordering Ivy Bridge products. This is why Intel is lowering utilization rate. A low inventory market can change very very quickly verses the article implied high inventory low sales. If the ODM/OEM start filling to normal levels, demand will increase significantly. Also Intel stated repeatedly that China market saw a sudden drop in demand. All across industrials this is playing out (non chip exports). Lastly, we have China changing governments shortly and the uncertainty in the policies that accompanies this. With Euro crisis, possible government change in US, the new China policies to be determined, everyone is very cautious currently across all industries not just chip manufacturing. I believe this is the real explaination to their earnings and actions.Beenthere - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
...you'd think there was a world wide economic depression that has been in effect for over four years and counting. Either that of Intel is trying to sell over-priced, under-performing laptops for an outrageous price?whatthehey - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
i have an idea: let's re-elect Obama so that he can put his plans into place for four more years and bring us out of this recession! </sarcasm>Hrel - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
3 billion in NET income!!!!! NET!!!! OMG!!!! Hey Intel, you guys think I can get a desktop CPU clocked over 3GHZ with 4 cores that runs 8 threads under 200 bucks? Please! I mean, fuck, 3 BILLION....NET!!!!!! And I still can't have a hyper-threaded quad core for 200 bucks.... just.... NET!!!!! Fucking flying monkeys fucked you sideways twice on Sunday. Hyperthreaded quad core, I wanna see the cost of materials, bill of sales on that right now. NET!!!! Maybe it should only be 100 dollars.krumme - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Its more or less a monopoly marketJKflipflop98 - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
Yeah, and the big bosses are already talking about not giving anyone raises because the future looks like it might be rough.gostan - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
each day I get at least ten news about consumers shifting to tablet and the PC market is a sunset industry. how much does the consumer segment contribute to Intel's revenue, really? 90%?I thought Intel would be more interested to sell more Xeon (high margin) than pentium or core i3? And when enterprises upgrade, they buy in bulk volume (100, 1000, 5000 units) and enterprises and SME definitely aren't moving away from PCs anytime soon. is tablet really killing Intel, or is it the slowing economy that's causing more harm?
28nm part contributes only 8% to TMSC's Q2 revenue. Forecast 14% for Q3. It just shows the lead Intel has over rivals in fabrication tech. Say if samsung / tmsc had yield issues beyond 22nm, what would to Apple's wonder chips?
krumme - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Man that is bad news. It probably also shows the overall industrial production capacity have low forecast, and therefore investments are kept low.I am surprised Intel lower q4 forecast this late. AMD must be way over their head, when even the money machine slips. Even a piledriver times 3 can save them.
TheJian - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
No price cuts=you got all the bleeding edge buyers...You'll now have to drop prices to spur sales. Get over the $329 newegg price and maybe I'll bit. No $309 on sale won't do it either. Release a new bleeding edge model and shove down the i3770K. Heck maybe sell a few below $200 and maybe people will buy some more. Just drop the ultrabooks, nobody buys them. I said this ages ago. Color me shocked regarding their ultrabook sales...ROFL. You couldn't sell those at $200-300 less. Witness the $249 google laptop bomb. 65% margins is over as Arm moves in at 40-50% (less?).I'll be more than happy to just get a 660ti for xmas and put off your chip until haswell if needed. I won't give up $329 for your chip that is barely better than a sandy in most things. I don't rip etc, so I'm only after cpu IPC etc which is going nowhere fast since AMD keeps cutting engineers and falling even further behind. When I buy a movie (as rare as that may be) I can download it ripped from pro's already faster than I can do it to my own movie I just purchased. Odds are a 6-9pass CCE from them will beat whatever I can do alone. I really don't understand anyone who rips (quicksync is useless to me with unlimited internet - netflix/hulu kills 1/2 the point of this too). With most devices hitting 720p & above, no point in ripping. You can watch the same file played on your phone/tablet that you do on TV. With Plexapp it usually doesn't matter what format it's in either in house. The device doesn't even do the crunching, your PC/server does.
Also note, people are halting purchased due to win8. I think they're waiting for it to hit, to see what everyone thinks before biting. At that point you'll see Dell/HP etc shipping win7 and putting 8 ads behind win7 ads on their respective sites :) Dell/HP already said Win8's slow update is hurting sales. Gee, pitch 7 and say you don't need 8, watch sales go up. Some think buying 8 is a waste, and don't get that 7 would be fine. A good portion of the people put off by 8, might actually have win9 in their heads now...LOL. MS better make Win9 a winxp/7 instead of a me/vista or this will just happen again. If people in IT don't like your beta, switch gears as we'll all tell our management to run from winX like the plague (just like we did with Vista). This kills your training/cert money too (and companies that rely on it). Nobody made much off their Vista training. Trainsignal, Nuggets, Learnkey (Learnsmart/Preplogic now) etc would all say this I'd guess. I never paid for ANY vista training in any way shape or form. The WINTEL platform better start paying more attention to USERS rather than catering to DRM from hollywood etc and pandering to people that aren't USING their crap or ARM/Android (chrome, whatever) will start eating their lunch for real. They'd better start pandering to US, the users!
$249 Chromebook should be Compatible with Android games with ease if not out of the box:
http://www.unrealengine.com/en/news/unreal_engine_...
http://tegrazone.com/news/morewildblood
http://tegrazone.com/news/hornannounce
http://tegrazone.com/news/epicfutureofmobile
Check out the graphics, and NOTE the mention of TEGRA specific optimizations. These will look and play better on NV based ARM chips.
http://www.intomobile.com/2012/06/05/nvidia-announ...
By next xmas consoles will have competition as even more get announced. This was 5 months ago mind you at GDC 2012. I have seen NO OTHER company pay to get games better on their chip and NV has a LONG history of doing this on the desktop as alluded to in the anandtech 680m vs 7970m grudge match a few days ago. I mean how the heck do you get your chip to run 2x faster in Diablo3 than the competing top of the line GPU? OPTIMIZE the games for your stuff and cozy up to game devs!
Intel server cpu competition? :
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/9/20/nvi...
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/john-carmack-tegr...
Waving goodbye to x86 (NVDA revenge for Intel booting them from chipsets?)
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/11/14/nv...
Make no mistake this is Jen Hsun's goal...LOL.
20nm Denver taped out 6 months ago :) OUCH. Sammy+NV hookup=Intel competition.
This is also bad news for AAPL who now has to depend on TSMC after pissing on Samsung for so long with the lawsuits. You reap what you sew correct? I think them leaving on their own was sort of like, quitting before your fired to save face :) Good luck with TSMC apple :) Now they can fight with QCOM/AMD for fab space (bad for AMD who has no money for preferential treatment, I'm sure apple will get their chips in volume - which may be bad for snapdragons future volume wise). Name a chip that has come from AMD/NV etc on time and in volume with high yields in the last 5yrs from TSMC. I don't think I can.
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?fe...
NV's take on quadro accessible from anywhere in your company, not just your desktop itself. GPU sharing, nice.
Once games are made all over and at high qual on NV/Android all platforms are in trouble (consoles/Wintel PC's/AMD). This is rimm all over again. Once Enterprise email was on apple etc the party was over. You're not special now, and profits tank. The same can be said about Wintel/DirectX. Google already has Apps which makes Office moot for a lot of people. The only thing left making Wintel desired is GAMES. We can't run to linux, no games (well, not many). But Android won't have that problem by next xmas. Should have some great ones, even oldies like Baldurs 1 & 2 enhanced by then (B1 enhanced comes out next month on android and iphone, two next year, then finally BALDURS 3, yeah baby). If all the Tegra work pays off for other chipmakers also then this will happen very quickly as android phones sell 3 or 4to1 vs. iphone now. That's a crapload of devices to dev a game for and Torchlight ceo just proved he makes the same $14 on a $20 game that he did selling a $60 at retail.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-09-18-t...
Why dev for WINTEL purely, when you can dev for 1Bil+ devices and port to Wintel if needed (much like console games get ported now - I see consoles dead next xmas as MS/Sony see the writing on the wall and just give this up)? Unreal 3 engine already runs buttery smooth according to Epic on Tegra3. I'm sure NV is putting a Tegra 4 in game devs hands as we speak 6 months after taped out samples popped off Samsungs 20nm process. No fan in the $249 laptop is impressive and it's not 20nm AFAIK. Surface better come out at $300-350 or they'll get killed. Which is kind of Google's point I guess. Dominate the market via volume, then cash in once games are out to play on just about everything currently held in people's hands. Good strategy.
If the next rev of Googles tablet type device is Tegra4 they'll get 3 sales from my family immediately at these insane prices. This will replace the need for a new Wintel laptop (which I need as mine is 7-8yrs old now, but was top of the line back then, NV 6800Go in it still does pretty good in games), and can be HDMI'd to a 24in easily at 1920x1200 or 1080P. We will basically get 2 laptop's replaced with these and the 3rd just so mom has one too...LOL. If it doubles as an xbox/ps2 replacement (I have both) and browses on TV when desired we won't hesitate. We may be put off a few months waiting for features, but surely a lot of people here will be in the same situation or close to it. We have 2 old high end lappy's to replace but are basically waiting for these, just a bit more powerful as I want it to replace the xbox360 sufficiently. Check out all the unreal 3 based games above. As the rest jump to mobile, these will become no brainer purchases for xmas gifts next year. That will be a major dent in any sales of 400-700 units from xbox720/ps4. A ton of people still don't have PS3/xbox360. Wave a PC replacement that doubles as ps3/xbox360 replacements and consoles are dust. Kids can do work (out to monitor/key/mouse setup in bedroom etc) and play on tv when desired with any xbox/ps/pc wireless controller. This is probably why MotelyFool picked NV as the next stock of the decade and 100bil company.
With sammy pulling down 8B this quarter vs. Intel's 3B, it's clear with NV's huge keplers taking fab space as Apple vacates they'll be cashing in for a while even without apple's volume (kepler ~294? if memory serves, is much bigger than A6 ~97mm). Samsung should have no trouble keeping fabs full with 3x bigger gpus coming into play along with tegra's and their own selling 20mil in 3 months. What would happen if kepler ends up in a google laptop with android games out and about? Dead or severely weakened AMD, NV could lock out Intel from their GPU's and move to Mobile & chrome based PC's. Devs would obviously dev for NV over Intel gpu's so things can change here quickly if WIntel doesn't watch out. Remember how fast 3DFX went down? How fast Rimm has gone down? It happens very quickly today. I'm just saying... :) Intel must be sweating bullets over ARM (no matter who leads that charge - or the whole freaking group of soc makers).