To Anyone who has not seen this excellent forecast by Intel. It doesn't hurt Dell............
* Please note: both stock and option quotes may be retrieved using stock symbols.
Intel puts PC industry on notice at CeBIT fair
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(Updates, wrapping telecoms and Siemens)
By Neal Boudette
HANOVER, Germany, March 19 (Reuters) - Intel Corp INTC.O
on Thursday put the PC world on notice that its dizzying gains
are not about to slow down anytime soon -- even for home
computers priced under $1,000.
At the CeBIT trade fair, Intel demonstrated a PC with a
Pentium II running at 700 megahertz -- more than twice the rate
of today's speed king, a 333 megahertz model.
The company said such leaps in processing power would help
spark a boom in the Internet and increase the global PC
population to more than one billion in the next few years from
200 million today.
"I can easily see it hitting one billion in five years,"
Intel senior vice president Albert Yu told Reuters. "It is
going to be a very different world."
Elsewhere at the sprawling trade fair, Germany's new
telephone companies raised the pressure on rival Deutsche
Telekom DTEG.F,unveiling price cuts and new services, while
moving to shake up Germany's cosy Internet industry, offering
access services that are driving down prices for using the
global computer network.
Industrial giant Siemens AG SIEG.F also reported strong
growth in foreign business at its key computer and
communications units, but said the domestic market remains
sluggish.
But Intel was showing no signs of expecting sluggish
growth. In its demonstration, the company used a PC to show an
animated underwater scene that undulated with the current of
the sea. As Yu moved the computer's mouse, it instantly wheeled
the perspective of the animation skyward into a sun beaming
into the depths and downward where submarines drifted by -- all
with in a warping, watery image.
"You usually need a very powerful graphics workstation to
do that," Yu said.
After the demonstration, a second programme that measures
processor speed showed the Pentium II was running at 702
megahertz.
At that speed, a Pentium II PC would have the performance
of what was the world's fastest supercomputer only a few years
ago.
Such massive processing power would enable PCs without
extra equipment to talk to users and respond to spoken
commands, said Gert Huegler, president of Vobis Microcomputer
AG, one of Germany's top PC suppliers.
"That means many more people will use PCs. The ease of use
border will fall," he said.
Hans-Juergen Mammitzsch, head of Dell Computer Corp's
DELL.O German unit, said the coming gains in processing power
would also boost Internet commerce.
"There will be huge opportunities when home PCs can run
full- motion video off the Internet, and the Internet becomes
truly multimedia," he said.
Intel, the world's dominant chip maker with about 85
percent of the market, said 700 megahertz chips should hit the
market in the next few years.
"This is still a technology demonstration, but that is
where we are going," spokesman Michael Sullivan said.
And it has even faster chips in the works. Yu, in a news
conference, also showed a simulation of the Merced processor,
which is due next year and should run at even higher speeds.
Sullivan would not say how fast Merced chips would run, but
he said they will be made on a more advanced process than
Pentium II.
"Past history is that a new process gets you more speed,"
Sullivan said.
While working on high-end chips, Intel has also developed
new processors for home PCs. Next month it will launch a new
Celeron brand that will hit 300 megahertz later this year and
appear in PCs priced from $800 to $1,200, Yu said.
Other important trends at the fair were seen in
telecommunications, where liberalisation of European markets
has been driving down prices in Germany.
Telekom's leading competitor, Mannesmann MMWG.F announced
price cuts at both its fixed-wire network Mannesmann Arcor and
its mobile phone group Mannesmann Mobilfunk.
Arcor said it would cut prices on some calls by up to 30
percent, while Mobilfunk unveiled a Favourite Number rate,
giving 10 percent off all calls to a selected number. Deutsche
Telekom recently gained regulatory approval for price cuts of
more than 40 percent in some areas.
Meanwhile, Siemens was seeing solid growth in sales of
telecommunications equipment to phone companies. Its public
communications unit saw five-month sales rise 30 percent to 6.5
billion marks, although domestic sales were down 15 percent.
Computer group Siemens Nixdorf said its foreign business
had been the main engine as European sales outside of Germany
grew eight percent in the first five months.
REUTERS
Rtr 21:04 03-19-98
Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service
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