Intel

John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Fri, 5 Dec 1997 21:08:27 -0800 (PST)


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On Wed, 3 Dec 1997 Bryan Larsen <blarsen@Newbridge.COM> Wrote:

>Cisco & Intel dominate their markets. In order to grow their
>revenues to match the expectations shown by their current P/E ratios,
>they will have to grow the market itself substantially, as well as
>fight off competitors who would love to grab market share, and the
>associated profits.

Intel's P/E is less than Cisco's and about half of Microsoft's, in fact it's
not much higher than the average stock, but I think Intel's future is much
brighter than the average company.

>I have trouble seeing the PC market growing substantially,

Well, the vast majority of people on this planet don't have a PC of any sort.
Someday they will.

>I see signs that many people are buying lower cost PC's when they do
>eventually buy.

I agree that under $1000 PC's are becoming more popular, it's because they
can do most of the thing most people want done, or they think they can,
however I don't think lack of demand will be a long term problem for Intel,
so when the stock sold off a few weeks ago I bought some.

>I don't see anything sparking a drive towards P2's by the public,
>either. Windows 98 will run fine on a Pentium with enough RAM & HD.
>Excel, Word, et cetera.

In the short term I think voice recognition will be Intel's savior,
especially when it gets integrated with common software, that's gota eat up a
lot of clock cycles. In the longer term the solution is virtual reality,
it never seems to have enough processing power to make people happy.

>[I don't see] Intel's market share (>90% ?) growing.

I think that in the next 4 or 5 years Intel will dominate not only the
hardware of PCs as it does mow but also of that of workstations, mainframes
and, thanks to the Open MP standard, even super computers. RISC technology is
10 years old now and it's running out of ideas, yes CISC is even older and
dumber, but that's not the point, the point is IA-64. Intel's new IA- 64
architecture really does seem better than anything the RISC people came up
with, and even if it was not, Intel has the critical mass to make it a
standard, something the smaller RISC companies could not do. RISC may be able
to hang on for a while with an inferior technology, just as Intel did with
x86, but they can't survive indefinitely because they don't have the huge
installed base that Intel had.

HP, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Bull, NCR, Sequent, Stratus, Hitachi, and Unisys have
all said they will go with IA-64. Digital says they will stand behind their
Alpha chip, but they also say they will make an entire IA-64 line, so despite
what they say I'm skeptical of Digital's commitment to Alpha and I think
potential customers will be skeptical too. Silicon Graphics is singing the
exact same song, but if their MIPS chip is so wonderful why are they making
IA-64 machines, and will they really be willing to match Intel's research and
development dollars to keep MIPS competitive? I doubt it.

Only pathological Intel (and Microsoft) hater Sun says they will never, ever,
ever, make a IA-64 machine, but they admit they're porting Solaris to IA-64.
Why? Deep down even Sun knows they will have to face reality someday, they
can't fight the entire world.

>And now back to lurk mode,

But not for long I hope, your first post was a very good one.

>Mark [Somehow lost last name]:
>I can't see Intel catching up in the near future unless they build
>some 3D capabilities into the CPU itself.

That's exactly what Intel plans to do with MMX2, but probably not until early
1999.

In the name of honesty I should tell you that I could be wrong, I've been
wrong before, I thought RISC would kill Intel and like a moron sold my Intel
stock 10 years ago.

John K Clark johnkc@well.com

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