F Fahmy: To quote a famous industry author, "Only the paranoid survive". You're the one who saw no impact from sub-zeros and predicted no change in PC asp's. Is that still your position? Do you still feel businesses will continue to pay historically high prices for PC's? Do you still feel the market environment for Intels products are unchanged?
My position is the same as it was back in June when I simply stated that Intel was entering a new era. I've always said that Intel will remain the dominant player in the business, (all you need to look at is Intel's fantastic fab capability and the inhibitive costs to the competition to increase capacity to reach that simple conclusion), but the business environment is going through some major changes.
Understanding these changes is important to the investor. There are a number of contributors to this thread who are multi-year longs and view this as a chat room for rah-rah posts. Right now, for example, I'm more interested in what Compaq is planning for the future, and what impact this has on Intel's plans. The current issue of Business week has an interesting article on Compaq, and implies that going forward we will see a triumvirate of Windows, Intel and Compaq, (WIC?).
But I can't see Intel as a visible participant in this. Dell, IBM, Gateway, etc. wouldn't be too happy. Besides, I believe Compaq will continue to leverage it's market position and Intels competition to beat down CPU prices. So the love/hate relationship continues.
What do you think of Covington? Where do you think it will be positioned? How will it's performance compare to P55? Where will the makers position Covington? Will the new low priced business offerings from Compaq, HP, etc, have an impact on Intel's product mix, earnings and margins? Will Compaq force a longer phase-out of P55? How is AMD coming on the yield issues? When will K7 come out? Where will Intel's stock be in six months? As an investor I'd be more interested in these answers than all the cheerleading that dominates this thread.
Why don't you give it a shot?
Gene |
