John re:"Do you believe that Intel has lost some of the important consumer brand loyalty to the PC manufacturer's (folks find it more important to buy a Compaq PC than an Intel PC), and if so do you believe this trend will continue?"
-- the funny thing about a brand is that you have to do everything you can to try to build value in your brand - to make it something that the consumer will demand/prefer, BUT you should never count on a brand to do your work for you. A brand is a promise of quality/performance/reliability, of a product that is well suited for its intended use, of security that a strong/capable company stands behind that product. I can't tell you anything about the relative change in intel's brand value - I have no time to stop and measure - we should always assume we must do everything we can to continue to build more value into the brand.
re:"Do you believe that the PC has approached it's ultimate functional capacity, and that further improvements will be less than on "an order of magnitude"?"
I know you don't mean this question to sound naive, but I can't help feeling that in twenty years this will seem as short-sighted a question as the old "why would anyone need more than 68K of memory" comments. Order of magnitude improvements come when you can stop being tied to a keyboard as your input/output device for a PC. Voice is a H-U-G-E (say it with me...) HUGE barrier that we are on the cusp of breaking through for ordinary people. That will change the world forever.
re:"What are your thoughts about the "cheaper" alternatives to PC's (Interactive TV, Net PC's, other technology), can the expansion of this technology make Intel's consumer franchise less important?"
They're not alternatives - they're augmentations.
re:"Finally, is Intel evolving (by choice or by market forces) into a company that can only focus on the corporate market, that because of their (excellent) R&D, and their decreasing sales and profit per employee, must sell primarily high end products to maintain GM?
I've held Intel stock through many roller coaster rides, but I am seriously concerned that maybe the marketplace has changed, and that maybe Intel has become a little too fat to react."
Those are always the right questions to ask, we ask them of ourselves all the time. You should keep asking in a loud voice as should we. I worry most when we think everything is going our way. I think we're doing the right things right now. I think you have to be able to mentally operate two, five, ten years into the future. This business demands it.
OK, I've gone on long enough. Let me put on my asbestos suit so that the flamers on this thread can pick apart my comments.
regards,
jh |
