Black-Scholes:>>>don't you think it is a no-brainer and probably imperative that INTC buyout BRCM and CUBE? And don't say INTC will just develop those chips on their own. That's the typical arrogance that always precedes a fall. <<<
Do you mean Intel should pay ~$1/1.5B to buy CUBE's audio and video compression technology? How long do you think it would take for a team of 4 at IA labs to duplicate this technology? My guess is that if they couldn't do it in less than 6 mos., they should be fired.
As to paying $10 to $15B for BRCM, that is just too ridiculous to contmeplate.
As for the set top box market, how big is that market anyway? Suppose the market is 500 million set top boxes - sure that would be a great business for BRCM to get into. But for Intel, a $10B market over 5 to 10 years is... how do you spell... chump change?
Let's give Craig Barrett the benefit of the doubt and let him work out his strategy in his own way and using his own timetable.
The good news for Intel shareholders is that we have plenty of cushion before we need to take desperate measures - such as inflating earnings through accounting trickery and making grand PR type acquisitions.
But, Craig Battett does have to do a better job communicating with the investment public. We are not all rocket scientists. Lot of us don't really understand what Intel does for a living - including professional analysts covering the company.
Most of us work with and own PC's - and that we understand. But, that is about all Barrett can safely assume that we understand.
We don't understand the Information Technology (IT) market and Intel's future in that market. Alan Green tried to explain to us the past week what the impact of Information Technology has been to the US and world economy. Even he admitted he had difficulty understanding its full impact. He kind of said that the impact of IT has not been picked up by economic data and implied that it may be the underlying cause for market exhuberance and in his very understated manner hinted and cautioned about a new paradigm.
Remember, AG was a Fortran and Cobol programmer at one time - and may have a better understanding of IT than most.
Secondly, Barrett should more fully explain to the rest of us, what the "server farms" are. Very few people understand what this business is all about - including virtually all of the the professional analysts covering the company.
Share prices should improve considerably if Barrett could just explain to non rocket scientists what the current business is and how it is situated vis a vis the e-commerce business of the future. He can then go about expanding that part of the business without constantly being second guessed by people who have never managed a $1 million budget much less than a $30B one.
Right now, virtually any market manipulator can cry out competiton, falling ASP, inventory build up, weak retail demand, appliances and Intel stock plummets.
Mary
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