Here's Charlie Glavin's (CSFB analyst) take on the current quarter:
"Intel appears on track to meet consensus 4Q909 EPS estimates, slightly above our own $0.60 estimate. We expect Intel will definitely hit or exceed our $7.9 billion revenue forecast...driven by seasonally strong holiday shipments. While raw ASPs appear to be flat to slightly down from their $183-$184 level last quarter, we believe that a combination of bundled products...means that the net ASPs probably did decline slightly.
"While it appears that Intel was able to supply all the 450 Mhz chips its customers desired, we do not believe that this was explicitly the result of poor yields on that process. The reason is that the 450 MHz Pentium III were still being run on the older 0.25 micron process that Intel wants to quick migrate to the new Coppernmine designs on 0.18 micron. If Intel really wanted to, we believe it would have 'binned down' its better yielding products--that is, if a tested processor passes at 500 MHz, it could have still been sold as a lower speed. Consequently, we believe Intel wanted to force the migration to higher speeds to help correct the downward ASP trends over the last year, and reposition the processor lines to the higher performing, lower cost based 0.18 micron designs. While the timing of this allocation was unfortunate, we believe it was a necessary strategy by Intel for the longer term, as Intel already has the Celeron line to address the low end Value PCs."
Can anyone verify that 2nd paragraph?
To me, it seems to be a mistake, because in the long run it meant that another door was opened to AMD. |
