Hello Fred,
I fully admit to a shameless promotion. :-)
Maybe you should read this article: infras.com It is in the public section of our website that highlights a study we did on the PC market. You can see by the date on this article that it was published in April and I will tell you here that it is friendly on the outlook for PC sales. Funny, a lot of pundits were saying the PC market was going to slow dramatically at that time and I admit that I was skeptical of great sales numbers. Again, we were looking for price pressures and lower margins and continue to do so at this time.
My prediction of alternative microprocessor use by the PC manufacturers has been very slow to materialize. I fully acknowledge that this will take more time to develop - if it does at all. The shares of Intel have rallied accordingly. Congratulations to all Intel shareholders for your nice profits.
So you (Fred) do not remain confused forever, I am going to set the record straight. I know I never stated that Cyrix ALONE would take 30% market share from Intel and I also made it very clear that I did not own, or planned to own, shares of any microprocessor manufacturer. The market share RANGE I gave was 20% to 30% and a list of several manufacturers was provided. I said that there would be many microprocessors made on 200mm wafers over the next few years and some of the producers I mentioned included AMD, IBM, SGS Thomson and Hitachi. The latter participating in a joint venture with IDT. I said these companies would take 20% to 30% market share but was obviously wrong with how quickly it would happen. Today there are others, like Samsung who has now licensed the Alpha architecture. No doubt, the forecasted market share gains can be called into question but the fact remains that these companies will be producing many microprocessors over the next few years. I don't know where you saw me say I was VERY bullish on Cyrix. I have never purchased a share of Cyrix stock and even went as far to say that I did not own a share of any microprocessor manufacturer. I readily admit that this forecast caused me to miss Intel's tremendous rally.
Whether or not demand during the Christmas Season soaks up the supply of PC's in the marketplace remains to be seen. Obviously the entrance of new boxmakers into the market has driven microprocessor sales significantly higher and for a few weeks, demand even pushed memory prices higher. The growing demand for microprocessors can be seen clearly in the data provided by Industry Pulse (another shameless plug :) ). It was also quite evident in the recent Intel earnings report. The Techweb article I wrote was pointing out that price cutting is rampant and one has to wonder why this occurring if demand is so strong. Must be a market share battle or, maybe the channel is full?
This does not relate to your post but I have one other point to make. In my opinion, Intel is operating at 100% capacity running equipment they have installed in the fab today. The point is that Intel still has fabs with room for new wafer processing equipment. If demand continues at the pace we have seen over the recent quarters you can bet that Intel will be placing new orders with IPEC, AMAT and several other customers.
Have a nice day,
Carl
INFRASTRUCTURE
infras.com
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