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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeff Fox who wrote (54261)	4/23/1998 3:53:00 AM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Jeff & Intel Investors - The Intel-Digital Equipment Deal May Get FTC Approval The FTC may possibly "bless" this settlement this coming Friday. Here comes StrongARM! Paul {=================} Late news from The San Jose Mercury. mercurycenter.com FTC to approve Intel-Digital Deal BY TOM QUINLAN Mercury News Staff Writer The Federal Trade Commission is expected Friday to sign off on the deal that ended the high-stakes legal confrontation between Intel Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp., resolving the second of three recent federal probes of the Santa Clara chip giant. Sources familiar with the investigation said the FTC has decided to accept the settlement of Digital's patent infringement claim against Intel without major modifications, following five months of delay. Under the settlement, Intel forged a patent cross-licensing arrangement with Digital, bought a semiconductor manufacturing plant and acquired the StrongARM processor, a popular low-cost chip. It was never entirely clear why the FTC announced that it would review the agreement, although industry observers speculated that the agency might object to the StrongARM acquisition, which could help the dominant microprocessor company push into new markets. The FTC's interest may also have been piqued by Digital's allegation that Intel was using its market power to keep Digital from pursuing the court case. At the time of the suit, 27 percent of Digital's revenues came from computers that incorporated Intel chips. The FTC could still decide to delay the announcement, as it did several times before finally disclosing its approval of Intel's purchase of graphics chip developer Chips & Technologies Inc. earlier this year. But sources say there has been no hint that the agency has significant concerns about any aspect of the agreement. Neither Digital nor Intel would comment on the possibility of a Friday announcement, beyond saying that they hoped the FTC would issue a ruling shortly. A favorable outcome in the Digital probe would be welcome news indeed for Intel, which has suffered through a rocky 1998 so far, with sales and profits lagging. ''This would represent a real coup for Intel,'' said Rob Enderle, a senior industry analyst for the market research firm Giga Information Systems in San Jose. ''The smart money was betting the FTC would take away StrongARM at least.'' However, Intel's legal troubles are far from over: the FTC is continuing a broader probe of possible antitrust violations. And earlier this month, a federal district court judge in Alabama rebuked Intel's business practices in a case involving the chipmaker's dispute with Intergraph Computer Corp. As a practical matter, approval of the Digital settlement does one particularly important thing for Intel. It gives the company a processor that should greatly enhance the low end of its line. ''They didn't have anything suitable for the handheld segment of the marketplace, and they had nothing for the emerging class of intelligent information appliances like set top boxes or web browsers,'' Enderle said. ''This agreement gives them that.'' The StrongARM processor is already used in hand-held computers such as Apple Computer Inc.'s recently discontinued Newton line and similar products from Psion. It's also being targeted toward consumer devices such as digital phones and cable television set top boxes. Digital developed that chip under license from Advanced Risc Machines Ltd. -- a joint venture of Apple Computer Inc., British-based Acorn Computers Ltd. and VLSI Technology Inc. Following the settlement with Digital, Intel also readied an agreement with ARM for the rights to the processor, pending FTC approval. Filed in May, Digital's patent infringement suit against Intel was the first public hint of what has since become a wider debate over how Intel competes. The Maynard, Mass. computer company accused Intel of using Digital's semiconductor designs to improve the performance of the Pentium and Pentium Pro line. But when Intel moved to cut off Digital's supply of technical information and chips, analysts predicted that Digital would be forced to back down. A settlement was announced in October. In addition to the StrongARM deal, the agreement calls for Intel to buy Digital's semiconductor operations for $700 million. It also gives Digital an undisclosed amount -- estimated by sources to be $100 million to $200 million -- as part of a cross-licensing agreement, and additional benefits that could include a price break on processors Digital buys from Intel. Ultimately, these discounts could bring the value of the deal to $1.5 billion, sources said. Intel also agreed to manufacture Digital's Alpha processor on a contract basis for at least the next five years. Since the settlement, Compaq Computer Corp. has agreed to acquire Digital in a deal worth more than $9 billion. For industry prognosticators trying to figure out where the government stands on Intel's dominance of the market for microprocessors, the Digital decision may further muddy already murky waters. It was widely expected that the FTC would use either the Chips or Digital investigations to begin reigning in the chip colossus. The FTC did take the unusual step of reserving the right to reexamine Intel's acquisition of Chips, but it is not clear whether it will do something similar in the Digital decision.

To: Jeff Fox who wrote (54261)	4/23/1998 11:26:00 AM
From: Pullin-GS	Respond to of 186894

>TeamStation will list at $9,999 and is available now. >The 384K-bps ISDN hardware upgrades will be available this >summer starting at $3,499. Only Intel can believe it's reasonable for employees to spend 37% of their time in conference rooms. Actually just about any Successfull company has many employees that interface with others in group meetings on a regular basis...it's called teamwork. ;-) Now if a person is a technician or administrative assistant, I can see why you would not grasp the idea of teamwork.....that goes against your union policies. ;-) Only Intel has the cash to think $14,000 is fine for a phone and phone line. If you had read the post you would have realized that it was ISDN video conferencing....not a simple phone hand set. Now that you have been "educated" on the obvious, let me point out to you that it is easy to spend in excess of 100K+ on a video conference station utilizing packet technology (read better than white-board or B+W "snapshots" every 10 seconds or so.) that INTC has proposed. INTC is no longer just in the CPU business...they are a powerful contender in the ever-growing data-networking sector as well. This latest push forward in the video conferencing area with an economical and functional solution only strengthens Intel's presence in this area. note 1 - I didn't realize that Intel had 10 million employees. Again...you did not read the post....*sigh* He said 10 million conference rooms nationwide. Never was it mentioned (by fact or congecture) a number of persons employed at Intel. note 2 - 22hrs is 37% of a standard Intel 60 hr work week. Actually the standard work week is 40 hours....but the opportunity is made available to INTC employees to work above and beyond what "the standard" stipulates offering those who are over achievers additional benefits within the organization. Put in layman's terms: those who work harder get rewarded. That is how corporate America operates, not just Intel. <G>

To: Jeff Fox who wrote (54261)	4/23/1998 5:51:00 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Only Intel can believe it's reasonable for employees to spend 37% of their time in conference rooms They didn't say anything about "reasonable" at all. They cited overall statistics for the US, which indicate that this is the trend. Certainly Intel doesn't have 10 million conference rooms. That's the total for the country! Only Intel has the cash to think $14,000 is fine for a phone and phone line. Intel "standard" is a fairly basic phone on every desk, and a fairly basic analog line with "voicestation" type speakerphone in every conference room. Real cheap and basic stuff. SOME conference rooms at Intel (and at many companies) have fancy video-conferencing equipment and appropriate lines, which is what sells for $14,000 and up. This stuff pays for itself really quick: Consider that bringing in three or four regional managers for a one-day staff meeting could cost that much in airfares and hotels ALONE! Only airlines think that investing in videoconferencing is NOT a better investment than continually paying for travel... And for the record: Intel folks do spend a lot of time in conference rooms. That's the way they work there. You do your individual work in your cubicle (which is really not big enough for more than one person anyway) and if you've got to meet with the team, hash out a problem with a colleague, discuss your status review with your boss, you just get a conference room. It works quite well, and makes most efficient use of the available floorspace. Compare it to a lot of companies which give out huge offices that often have only one occupant unnecessarily hogging a lot of space. mg