Hi Mark, Article...Asian PC Growth Still Strong!
news.com
Asian growth still strong, Intel says
By Reuters
April 17, 1997, 10:30 a.m. PT
SINGAPORE--Chip giant Intel (INTC) sees flat to slightly higher quarterly revenues from Asia through the rest of 1997, senior executives said today.
"We've had a huge surge in the last six to nine months," Paul Otellini, Intel's executive vice president and director of sales and marketing, told a news conference.
"Looking out for the next three months, some of those [Asian markets] are going to slightly quieter periods, some to slightly livelier periods. The underlying PC growth across Asia is strong; the net result will be flat to slightly up.
"Asia has been our fastest growing segment in our geographical markets over a year and a half," he said, adding that he anticipated continuous quarter-to-quarter growth over the rest of the year.
On a year-to-year basis, growth would be strong, said Sean Maloney, vice president and general manager of Asia Pacific operations.
When Intel released results for the first quarter ended March 1997, it said it expected revenues for the second quarter to be flat to slightly up from the first quarter. It posted better-than-expected first quarter performance with net profit of $1.98 billion on revenues of $6.45 billion.
Asia Pacific, excluding Japan, contributed 20 percent of global revenues. Maloney told Reuters he saw Asia's portion staying around the 20 to 22 percent region in the current quarter.
He said Intel was benefiting in Asia from the use of computer systems as productivity tool and the strong belief in intranets. "China is a huge market. In India, tariffs have been coming down. Tariffs were a primary obstacle to deployment of information technology. Now the India market is beginning to take off."
He said Intel was investing more in its Asian plants. "Over the last five to ten years, capital has shifted from being heavily fab [wafer fabrication] based into being more spread between fab and assembly and tests.
"Our assembly and tests sites in Asia are enormous capital investments. Over the current 18-to-24-month time period, we are doubling investments in those sites," he said.
Intel had previously announced a $230 million flash memory plant in China to be completed in mid-1998. To date, it has spent $1.6 billion in Malaysia for assembly and test operations. In the Philippines, it will invest $1.16 billion by 2000.
Intel's total planned capital investment for 1997 is $4.5 billion, as announced when it released first quarter results.
Maloney said Intel was working with Asian manufacturers to produce the NetPC based on specifications by Intel and Microsoft. It would be available in Asia around September.
Intel says the NetPC would lower PC management costs as it is automatically managed from remote locations, has a sealed case, and includes no accessory slots, so users cannot alter settings.
Otellini said Intel's new Pentium II processor with a dual bus architecture would be available in May. The microprocessor would be faster as there would be less bandwidth bottlenecks.
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All those Millions of Chinese and Indians are just going to love the Pentium 2! After all these years of information control the pull to get hooked to the Net will be tough to resist.
Michael |
