Andreas,
About rumors, false or otherwise about a company, I've owned shares of EMC for a couple or three months now. Just in that short period of time, their CEO, Mike Ruettgers has come out twice explaining to the press that everything at EMC was just fine. Once was to dispel Y2K rumors, that were saying that EMC wouldn't do well this year because of it. The other time was when HP and EMC went their separate ways on storage sales, HP going over to Hitachi. Again, Ruettgers came out and said it would have no effect on overall sales. Seems like a perfect opportunity right now for Intel to dispel rumors (if, of course they have a good story to tell).
I don't expect a company to come out like that, saying things are fine, too often. It's could become almost like the little boy crying wolf. Still, Intel seems to be a sitting duck the last few quarters, what with the "perceived" slowdown of PC sales, the threat of AMD, whatever, out there. Another thing is that any analyst or otherwise can understand PCs and CPU chips, they're so commonplace now. So, anyone can come out with whatever they feel like, as if they are an expert. Networks and software are a different story. I don't think your average analyst understands what Cisco does, vs. Ascend or Nortel. So, nobody bothers them! In the PC and Intel world, a little knowledge is dangerous and can, and will, it seems, be used against Intel.
Tony |
