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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: EJhonsa who wrote (32660)	9/30/2000 7:08:40 PM
From: saukriver	Respond to of 54805

Intel--is it even a gorilla? Eric, I was just thinking that someone should open up a discussion on Intel on this Sat. p.m. And then along comes your excellent post. saukriver

To: EJhonsa who wrote (32660)	10/1/2000 3:28:56 AM
From: Doren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

I built a 600Mhz Athlon this year. The price and the performance was so much better I hardly considered an PIII chip. I'm glad I chose the AMD chip, and the price performance is even better now. For cheaper chips the Duron kills the Celeron. This holiday season I will be enjoying upgrading to a 1Ghz Athlon. If you look into the future I think the Transmeta chip will kill Intel and the PPC in the notebook area. Their low energy strategy makes a lot of sense. Intel is toast, I can't believe the valuation it has related to AMD. I am a longtime Mac user with an 8500 and a G4, but my Athlon has replaced my G4 as my primary machine.

To: EJhonsa who wrote (32660)	10/1/2000 9:14:55 AM
From: Apollo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Eric, thanx for your comments on Intel...... I've owned Intel since '97, and during that time have seen it both at highs and at lows. I have posted here, both the good news and some bad. I had already posted your Fool references about Itanium, as well as feedback from one of the technical mavens on the Intel thread here at SI. I also posted here a couple of weeks ago, that for your reasons and others, we pared back significantly on our Intel holdings and reinvested them in Storage. By luck, that was just before Intel preannounced their earnings shortfall for the quarter. Message 14426546 You've pointed out nicely some of the concerns about Intel. My own posts had raised issues about management losing focus as it necessarily pushed into new frontiers, which were not moneymakers at the present. But to be balanced, we should reassert the positives too. Intel is kicking butt in servers, which is an extremely hot market now and in the foreseeable future. Intel is dominant in notebook mpu's; we'll see what AMD puts out, when it puts out, and what it's Fab capacity will be to meet demand then. Intel is strong in Flash Memory, which you also rightly pointed out. Intel has cash, and continues to generate lots of cash. Over the long haul, I expect Intel will remain profitable, but less than expected. I'm comfortable with them comprising 5% of my portofolio for now. Apollo

To: EJhonsa who wrote (32660)	10/1/2000 11:49:23 AM
From: erickerickson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

A small tidbit about INTC and AAPL For me, a defining event that signaled danger at Intel was when they could no longer dictate plug-compatibility. For years, if you made a competing chip, you were forced to make one that fit the same socket as an INTC chip. Relatively recently (and bear with me here, I'm going from memory in an area I don't track very carefully) I believe it was Dell that started offering systems with motherboards that accepted AMD chips rather than INTC chips. One of the defining characteristics of Gorillas is that they can force the competitors to play the Gorillas' game by requiring that competitors be compatible with the Gorilla's technology. The fact that PC manufactures aren't bending to Intel's will on this issue is troubling. Not saying that this is proof that INTC is no longer a Gorilla. Rather, this is certainly a chink in INTCs armor. Also, INTC can marshal HUGE resources if they want to actually attack this issue. I'd be keeping a real sharp eye on where INTCs R&D dollars are going if I were invested in AMD. AAPL: I'm of two minds concerning Apple. On the one hand, a 50% drop seems excessive. On the other, I just don't have much faith. AAPL made a brilliant move very early on and went after the education market. The reasoning seems to have been that "we get all these kids familiar with Apple, and when they get to be in business they'll buy more of our machines". The problem is, it didn't work out that way. Their core education market is, I believe, eroding since educators now realize that the reality of the business world is such that students are better served by getting them familiar with Windows machines. I'm not sure that Apple's earnings are coming back. "Cracks are a normal part of the manufacturing process". About as arrogant as INTCs "Very, very few people will ever have an application that has problems because of the floating point problem in our chip". Unfortunately, Apple doesn't enjoy such dominance that they can really force us to live with problems. And anyway, Apple is clearly not a Gorilla so why should we worry? Best Erick