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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AK2004 who wrote (29560)	3/5/1998 1:30:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1572656

INTC said Asia & lower ASP weren't culprit Intel shakes industry with sales outlook BY TOM QUINLAN Mercury News Staff Writer Industry bellwether Intel Corp. issued a warning that shook the high-tech industry Wednesday, projecting that its revenues for the first quarter of 1998 would be 10 percent less than expected. Even more alarming was the Santa Clara chip giant's inability to identify a reason for the dramatic drop in sales. That immediately fueled fears the industry is headed toward a broad-based slowdown. Such major companies as Seagate Technologies Inc., Oracle Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Sybase Inc., S3 Inc. and Applied Materials Inc. have reported or warned of disappointing earnings in recent months. But analysts and company officials have generally explained those away as problems specific to the companies or their market segments. ''All that these other companies can see is a part of the market,'' said Piper Jaffray Inc. analyst Ashok Kumar. ''Intel sees into every nook and cranny of the industry, and if they see a big drop-off, you know it's serious.'' Up to now, most market research firms had been predicting a fairly robust 15 percent to 20 percent growth rate in PC sales for 1998, even accounting for the well-advertised meltdown in the Asian economy. But it's hard to see how such vigorous growth could occur if Intel's orders are dropping. The company's microprocessors power more than 85 percent of the world's personal computers. As recently as January, Intel had said that sales for its first quarter would be about $6.5 billion -- about the same level as the fourth quarter of 1997. The Wednesday warning suggests sales will be closer to $5.85 billion.