Word: pc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...last thing you would expect to hear Paul Otellini praising is an Apple product. Otellini, 54, is the incoming CEO at Intel, the chipmaker that along with Microsoft has ruled the PC world for much of the past 20 years and has pushed the Macintosh platform to the fringes of market share. Yet when Otellini outlines his company's new strategy, the first product
...sounds strange from the mouth of a man with the well-manicured looks of a successful accountant. "It's my music machine, man. That's what you want. This," and here he gestures to a laptop across the conference room at Intel headquarters, "is my content machine. That [desktop] PC is my productivity machine. You have to start by thinking about the things people want to do with computers and work backward...
...founder Gordon Moore predicted that given advances in transistor miniaturization, computer processors should double in speed every 18 months. Not only did Moore's law become the most trustworthy truism in technology, it was also the rock on which all Intel marketing was founded. Why did you need a PC with an Intel Pentium II processor? Because it was four times as fast as your poor outmoded Pentium I. And so the product cycle continued...
Intel watchers are also nervous about how much the company is dependent on the rapidly maturing computer market. "They have to look beyond the PC," says Apjit Walia, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, who points out that Intel has fallen far behind its rivals in putting chips in cell phones and other wireless devices. "They have been talking the talk in communications; they haven't walked the walk." Indeed, Intel's communications division is still losing money, despite a $10 billion investment since 2001. Barrett and Otellini say the division is a work in progress...
Doomsday predictions, of course, have surrounded Intel for years: that the PC market is maturing, that the competition is cutting into Intel's lead. Yet the company has managed to keep growing. Despite AMD's recent resurgence, Intel's position in the PC-chip business remains unchallenged, with a market share of nearly 90%. It is also a step ahead thanks to Barrett's farsighted investments in manufacturing. While AMD has one major semiconductor plant, Intel has four placed strategically around the world, churning out chips 24 hours a day. And unlike PC manufacturers and retailers, who have to deal...